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Dom Robinson reviews

Distributed by
Momentum Pictures

Cert:

Cat.no: MP637

Running time: 111 minutes

Year: 2006

Pressing: 2008

Region(s): 2, PAL

Chapters: 12 plus extras

Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0

Languages: English

Subtitles: English

Widescreen: 1.85:1

16:9-Enhanced: Yes

Macrovision: Yes

Disc Format: DVD 9

Price: £15.99

Extras: Trailer

---

Director:

Lasse Hallström (An Unfinished Life, Casanova (2005), Chocolat, The Cider House Rules, The Hoax, Once Around, Sammy, Something to Talk About, The Shipping News, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, TV: New Amsterdam)

Producers:

Betsy Beers, Mark Gordon, Leslie Holleran, Joshua D. Maurer and Bob Yari

Screenplay:

William Wheeler (based on the book "The Hoax" by Clifford Irving)

Music:

Carter Burwell

Cast:

Clifford Irving: Richard Gere
Dick Suskind: Alfred Molina
Edith Irving: Marcia Gay Harden
Nina Van Pallandt: Julie Delpy
Andrea Tate: Hope Davis
Shelton Fisher: Stanley Tucci
Harold McGraw: John Carter
Ralph Graves: Zeljko Ivanek
Frank McCulloch: John Bedford Lloyd
Howard Hughes: Milton Buras
George Gordon Holmes: Peter McRobbie

The Hoax tells the story of author Clifford Irving (Richard Gere) and his long-time researcher Dick Striskind (Alfred Molina). Irving's writing career is going nowhere and he needs one big idea to help him make him rich - easier said than done, but he has the gift of the gab, as well as a number of outright lies, and given that the film's set in 1971 with many splendid pieces of scenery and settings on which the writer of this film can weave his tale, there's one thing that springs to his attention and he's like a dog with a juicy bone in that he can't let it go, even if threatens everything he loves in the process because the rewards are too great if it pays off.

Together, they set about writing a life story of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, making it all up as they go along with the belief that the more implausible things sound... the more plausible they just might become! And there's no way Hughes will come out of hiding because he'll have to face a court case over the TWA and how things didn't quite go to plan for him wanting to build his own aircraft after he took control of the airline.

Early on, they talk to one of his colleagues at Toolco and extract information about their subject in a very backhanded, but clever, way. In the background, the film mixes the 1971-based story in nicely with elements of the politics of the day such as Richard Nixon and the eventual Watergate scandal. As it progresses, the film takes you down a number of neat and clever paths you don't really expect and apart from it taking some changes in direction just a little bit too far, the majority of the times where they do work just makes me love it all the more.

Richard Gere's at the top of his game here - particularly where his character stumbles upon imitating Hughes' voice after hearing a recording and then gets into character to help him write the book off-the-cuff - as is Alfred Molina, and there's great support where required from Marcia Gay Harden as Clifford's wife, Edith, Julie Delpy as his mistress, Nina and Hope Davis as Andrea Tate who secures the book deal with Irving at McGraw-Hill Publishing.

The picture is superb from start to finish without any problems and brightly evokes the period of the early '70s perfectly. Suprisingly, there's no DD5.1 soundtrack for this DVD, which seems rather odd for a modern film, but it's not a special FX movie so it's not a big problem and I love the incidental music as well. Carter Burwell has a knack for this kind of thing.

At first I had wondered whether my preview disc just didn't have all the planned extras, since Sendit.com also states that the DVD includes deleted scenes, a 'making of' documentary, other featurettes and director & writer interviews, but the BBFC site only lists the trailer. And this trailer lasts about a minute.

In addition, there's a pre-DVD trailer for The Last Legion and a bloody Minstrels advert! Shocking, Momentum! This is not the age of the rental video(!)

The disc comes with English subtitles, the menu has a small section of the incidental music repeating over and over with clips from the film showing the very end (which does seem a bad move) and there are only 12 chapters which isn't enough and they're also very spread out.

So, The Hoax is a wonderful film with a cracking cast, but it's the presentation of this DVD which lets it down and leans me more to suggesting it as a definite rental rather than a definite purchase.

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2008.

DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.

PC games reviewed by the editor are on: