Review of Deceived (1991) by Bill S — 05 Aug 2014

There may be a decent thriller buried somewhere in "Deceived", but I was too numbed by the blandness of it all to notice. It feels more like a Lifetime movie of the week than something people would spend money on in a theater. despite the fact that it starts off strongly and pulls you into the story.

Frankly, however, it's all downhill from there. The direction by British filmmaker Damian Harris is dreamlike but dull to look at, and all of the thriller elements are saved until the final ten minutes. We get a preview of that earlier with the predictable scenes of strangers in the house and windows being propped open, but they're not very effective mainly because we don't know at that point that the John Heard character is still alive.

And speaking of Heard, he's completely ineffectual; as a villain mostly because there's nothing all that menacing about an art dealer trying to retrieve a valuable necklace. Still, the largest chunk of the blame for the film's rampant mediocrity goes to star Goldie Hawn. I can understand her wanting to branch out from her kooky comedies and that her character is supposed to be traumatized by these events, but that's no excuse for her to sleepwalk through her performance here. And when she does finally show some backbone at the end, it's clearly too late to save the film.

"Deceived" isn't so much a bad film as it is simply a routine and forgettable one. There's little here to sustain your interest throughout the entire running time.