Choke: Blending Sex and Alzheimers

October 01 2008 22:03 Filed in: Movies
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Why Sam Rockwell isn’t an A-list star right now, I don’t quite understand. This guy simply destroys—in a good way. His performances are fresh and always funny while still being believable and grounded. Choke fits in with some of his more edgy and fringe work.

The movie is based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, better known to the film crowd as the author of Fight Club. Choke really isn’t in the same genre as Fight Club, but still exhibits the some of the same twistedness in its main characters.

Rockwell plays Vincent Mancini, a struggling sex addict who works in a colonial period theme park as an actor while trying to keep his deteriorating mother, played by Angelica Huston, in a nice nursing home. He manages to help finance this by routinely running a restaurant con where he pretends to choke to death in the hopes some well off patron will save his life. Mancini establishes relationships with these people after they allegedly save them and bilks them for money.

What makes the character interesting is a theme that starts to come in to focus over the course of the film. Vince, while generally a pretty despicable person, usually ends up having his morally questionable and reprehensible behavior end up being the root of good for those around him. This becomes key to the course of the story when a startling revelation about his true father comes to the surface through his mother’s diary.

Choke spends a lot of time pushing the limits but always seems to pull its punches at the last minute so it never seems to cross the lines I was hoping it would. With all the sex and weirdness going on it almost seems tame. That was the true disappointment. There are so many interesting elements to the film like the sex addiction and the choking scams that are simply there and don’t really become part of the story. It’s these elements that make the film very watchable and funny, but the lack of importance to the overall story leaves you with a little bit of an empty, unsatisfied feeling.

However, great performances from Rockwell and Huston as well as an appealing performance from Kelly MacDonald make the film stand out.

Despite all the strange twists and edgy humor the whole movie comes down to a story about man trying to come to terms with the impending death of his mother. Unfortunately as the gaps in his relationship are filled in through flashbacks we are still never able to get inside the character’s head enough to ascertain how he feels about her. Choke bounces around this so much without giving us anything solid that we never seemed to secure an emotional bond with the our main character.

I would have to give Choke a mild recommendation based on how damned funny and awkward some of the scenes are, though. Sam Rockwell always manages to bring an element of manic energy to his roles and that’s why more of Choke works than doesn’t.

Not sure where this film will fall in the grand scope of things, but I have a feeling that it will have a bit of a cult following when it hits DVD.

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