dworldeater
Choke is a satirical dark comedy and film adaptation based on Chuck Palahniuk's of Fight Club fame novel.Written for the screen and directed by Clark Gregg, he did a pretty good job for his 1st time as a director, keeping a quick pace and staying on point with telling a cohesive story with a consistent tone. Sam Rockwell is the leading man in the film and does a good job portraying anti hero Victor, a sex addict and con artist who fakes choking in order to help support his mom(Angelica Huston) that needs caring for due to her Alzheimer's disease and mounting hospital bills. This is a good balance of drama and raunchy, black humor. While, I won't regard Choke as the best film of this type, performances were good and I found this to be pretty entertaining and funny. Cool flick.
nowego
Being a bit of a fan of Sam Rockwell and Kelly Macdonald, this was a pretty easy movie to watch. It helped that it was also quite amusing and downright funny in some parts. The sex might put some viewers off, but for me it didn't detract from the movie. I haven't read the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, so I cannot judge whether it does it justice or not. I can only judge on what I just watched.Anjelica Huston and Brad William Henke do a really good job as mother and best friend respectively. Maybe a minor spoiler, look for the blond cancer joke the stripper inadvertently enacted, it made me laugh out loud, but some might not find it so amusing. An amusing movie right up there with some of Sam Rockwell's good ones, one of the few movies on IMDb in which I think the current rating of 6.5/10 is about right.
WiseOne-4
I've never watched a movie and been left with an overwhelming impulse to hunt down the director and flog them repeatedly with a strand of anal beads.....until now! Clark Gregg took a brilliant book ready to stand side by side on the silver screen next to Fight Club and instead threw up a hollow shell that really just amounted to a retelling of the plot points from the book. He left out the most important element which is of course Palahniuk's sharp witted deadpan narration.As other people have touched on Fincher and Ed Norton nailed it in Fight Club but in this film Clark Gregg absolutely ruined it. Palahniuk is a brilliant satirist, a modern day Kurt Vonnegut, but without his narrative voice reacting to all of the ridiculous things going on in the story it feels more like an episode of My Name is Earl than a Palahniuk story.Watching the movie you get the sense that even the actors know it's not working and are just going through the motions the best they can. Clark basically wrote an outline of all the plot points from the book and tried to mimic them leaving out most of palahniuk's narration and not adding any imagination, style or wit. The voice over narration he does include leaves out 95% of Palahniuk's best material. The book had me belly laughing time and again. Palahniuk's writes in simple language but he has a brilliant dry wit and cynicism that's unmistakable.It's like Clark Greg was afraid to copy finchers fight club style so he went in a completely opposite mind numbingly generic direction. Director Clark Greg, also the screenwriter, had the nerve to cast himself in the role as the magistrate of colonial dunsboro. A character that was present perhaps one scene in the book, Clark writes himself in multiple new scenes for the character, none of which are funny. Go figure.Why is it not surprising Clark Gregg's directing credits only include this movie. Thank God I'm not the only one that believes he should never be behind a camera again.If anyone has yet to read the book, please please don't let this atrocity scare you away. The book is absolutely brilliant!
christopher-underwood
Good solid black comedy from actor/director, Clark Gregg. I'm assuming that the great performances in difficult territory are, at least in part, due to the director's acting background. I have not read this Palahnuk book, but shall now for I am surprised to find myself in agreement with others who reckon this could have been longer. 90 minutes is usually fine for me but here there was so much going on in so many different ways and all made so watchable by the sly and wicked humour that runs throughout. Angelica Huston gives a marvellous central performance whilst Sam Rockwell and Brad Henke just perfect. It is a vitally good performance too from Kelly Macdonald and the final twist intriguing. I've put of seeing this because of the whole sex addict business and the title! As it turns out the choking scenes are more or less played for laughs as are the sex clinic ones. By the end we are wishing this would go even deeper and further, but then I guess the book does and that this is at least a good stab at conveying the essential qualities. The very decent script certainly comes across as believably Palahnuk. Good film.
AD
