PersianPlaya408
This political thriller about illegal oil trading, the Russian mafia, and government conspiracy is well done, and deserves a much better rating and credit than people give it. It is not amazing by any means, but its solidy acted, written well, reaches some very important moral and political ideas without being completely illogical and unrealistic (of course its not real, but it very well could be). Slater was good as tom hanson and i liked Robert Loggia in the supporting role as Jared TOlson, the film has good cinematography from Adam Sliwinski and editing by Richard Schwadel. Overall good effort from harvey Kahn, better than a lot of high budget films, amazing how this film probably cost a couple million to make max (perhaps 5-10 mil after slater gets his cash)...--- IMDb rating: 5.1, my rating: 8/10
davemed
I was afraid that it was going to be bad when the "maguffin" as Hitchcock called it was tacitly revealed as an oil company executive was having a conscience attack over something...and it was not a science fiction film! I couldn't say for sure if the problem was the lack of a real story or the misdirection of an outstanding cast, but this movie is slow, muddled and doesn't deliver at the end of the film. Christian Slater and Selm Blair are two of my favorites and it really is painful to watch them trying to give this doa project a bit of life. When I say that this is "Much Worse Than Awful", I mean it! Talent and budget can't go anywhere without a real story. Stay away from this one.
bitter-4
Christian Slater in "The Deal". Good lord in heaven: what did Slater do in a former life to deserve this movie? He has made a lot of really bad choices lately ("Mindhunters", "Masked and Anonymous", "Alone in The Dark") but this is the kind of script even Oliver Platt would walk away from. A laughably bad script from first (and hopefully last) time screen writer, Ruth Epstein, who should have kept her job at Goldman Sachs. The pathetic premise of an oil conspiracy is about as thin as an Olsen Twin, and the dialog is twice as brittle; made doubly so by Angie Harmon when she tries to pull off a Russian accent (which, if I've done my math right, means the dialog has the octo-brittleness of a single Olsen, but I digress). Slater tries to crawl his way through a flimsy maze of corporate deceit, while woman after woman can't help but chew his tongue. Slema Blair is actually very good as his tree-hugging girlfriend who shows him the path to salvation, only the scene where she actually show him anything must have been deleted, 'cause I never saw it. Maybe they're saving it for the DVD. There is simply nothing thrilling about this thriller. They must have just figured if the stacked the cast with actors like Robert Loggia and John Heard they could ad-lib their way around the awkward exposition. Director Harvey Kahn, who has produced an impressive body of work but directed nothing of note, must have compromising photos of the cast. Ultimately, Slater is totally miss-cast as a Wall Street hack. They should have gone with an unknown and then maybe they could have gotten away with the low budget production values and pass 'The Deal' off as a student film. You have been warned.
bakossi
I saw The Deal last night in Chicago. It's a dense film, with a lot of oil industry insider stuff, but very entertaining, and a really important film for people to see, given the path we're headed down in our country. Thought Selma Blair was terrific--best I've ever seen her. Robert Loggia, Colm Feore (my first time seeing him) great, too. Could have done without Angie Harmon, and would have liked the ending to extend out a bit further. I'd also have liked for there to be more intrusion of the reality of the $6/gallon world at war (which is the backdrop of the film) into the story--think that would have added even more punch--but none of that will knock a star off my rating, given the crap I've seen this summer so far--it's actually a 20 star by comparison. I guess I should say something about some of the negative critical reviews of the film. All I can conclude is that these folks are either lazy or overworked. In my experience, a lot of them have highly recommended films recently that are just garbage compared to The Deal. I guess the justification is supposed to be that these other films are "good escapes," but you know what? People already spend too much time in this country "escaping" instead of paying attention, and that's why we're in the mess that we're in. The Deal makes it fun to pay attention.
AD
