Review of Choke (2008) by Chads. — 28 Sep 2008

In M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village", the period detail of the rustic homestead was perfect except for one tiny detail; the tombstones in the villagers' graveyard looked too new. Vincent's boss at a colonial theme park is constantly on the prowl for such anachorisms: a wigless pate, a newspaper, a handjob.

Vincent(Sam Rockwell) is a sex addict. He doesn't have to choke the chicken(fifteen times a day!!!) like his best friend Denny(Brad William Henke). Ladies love Vincent: Ursula(Bijou Phillips) risks having her check docked by their Colloquial Old English-speaking boss, who probably knows that manual stimulation of the johnson was rare in the 19th century.

Even doctors can't resist the tour guide. "Choke" also recalls "The Sixth Sense" in the way the filmmaker skillfully guards its secret from the audience through careful staging.

Vincent isn't dead, but his heart is. The doctor(Kelly MacDonald) sees this. She sees crazy people. Vincent supplements his income by choking on food in public eateries. It's hard to believe that total strangers would feel responsible for Vincent's life, so much so that they'd actually send him money, but then again, Fred Flintstone felt obliged to look after a con-man(J.

Montague Gypsum in an episode of "The Flintstones" called "This is Your Lifesaver") after luring him off a bridge. The near-death experience scam is for a good cause, though. Vincent wants his mother(Anjelica Huston) to have the best medical care possible.

She plays a big part in her son's life, and unfortunately, the story suffers for it. If "Choke" performed the Heimlich Maneuver on itself, expelling some, if not all, of Vincent's childhood flashback scenes with Ida on the lam, it would alleviate some of the overstatement that the narrative makes about Vincent's inability to love Paige, since the son's arrested development already has an explanation through his frequent visits at the institution with his mother.

Getting to know the people in Vincen't encounter group would've made better use of the film's running time. But the film is smart about reigning in the fantastical impressions that people have about Vincent at the hospital.

The doctor is a hilariously fallible storyteller.