Disturbingly Funny Choke Engages the Gag Reflex

Victor (Sam Rockwell) has got people figured out. He goes to restaurants, scans the surroundings, spots his prey and then proceeds to start choking to death. These good Samaritans save his life, becoming so close to him they feel an urgent need to take care of his problems, including giving him money so he can keep his sickly mother Ida (Angelica Huston) residing in an upscale hospital.

Sam Rockwell in Fox Searchlight's Choke

Not that the man’s weird idiosyncrasies stop there. Victor has a day job working as an Irish servant at an 18^th Century historical theme park, attends sexaholic meetings with his best friend Denny (Brad William Henke) where he gets it on with fellow addicts in the toilet stalls, is currently having trouble getting it up for the alluring young physician (Kelly Macdonald) taking care of his mom and has a series of bizarre fantasies and odd fetishistic predilections too obscene to believe.

So when the increasingly more demented Ida hints she might be willing to reveal her son’s paternal heritage during one of her less and less frequent moments of clarity, Victor is understandably shaken out of his histrionically nihilistic rut. But his origins might be more divinely holy than he’d ever imagined, and when the fate of the world could suddenly be at your fingertips the thought of banging the random librarian in the bathroom is almost enough to make you gag.

Choke is absolutely insane, and I mean that in the best sense of the word. Based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk (the genius behind Fight Club), this is one of the more absurdly out-there dramatic comedies of the year. To say it is an original would be a massive understatement. To say it is going to alienate and disgust just as many viewers as it throws into convulsive fits of rapture would be an even bigger one.

Written and directed by noted character actor Clark Gregg (recently seen giving Tony Stark a governmental assist in Iron Man) this is a movie fearlessly unafraid to blast open taboos, scattering its Americana targets to the four winds like a heat-seeking missile honing in for a M16's exhaust. Nothing is off-limits, no stone unturnable, and if political correctness and unabashed genteel politeness are your thing than I’d recommend staying as far away from this as possible.

For everyone else, here is cause for celebration. This is a story that is as painfully disturbing as it is gut-busting hysterical. One moment I’d be laughing so hard tears would be forming in the corner of my eyes, seconds later those same tears would be flowing down my cheeks like emotion-fueled waterfalls. The film makes viewers think, forces them to ponder the uncomforting realities haunting their own everyday lives, Gregg doing it with a sly wink and a crooked smile that’s audaciously original.

Not that things are perfect. Far from it, actually, the biblical portions of the plot not having anywhere the same impact as they do in Palahniuk’s novel. In fact, they’re actually kind of silly, and when the film takes a third act turn towards seriousness I couldn't help but feel just a teensy bit letdown. I also wasn’t all that happy with the not very surprising road Macdonald travels upon, the shocks associated with her not exactly unexpected.

On the flip side, the rest of the supporting cast (including the filmmaker himself) are just plain wonderful, both Huston and Henke having moments of radiance that are utterly endearing. More, as a director Gregg shows himself to possess a solid eye for detail, he and cinematographer Tim Orr (The Pineapple Express) showcasing an outstandingly organic eye for detail that's really wonderful.

But it is the continued underrated brilliance of Rockwell that makes Choke worth the price of admission. While I still think his work in David Gordon Green’s Snow Angels is arguably the best of his career, this performance is definitely right up there with some of his other scene-stealing turns in pictures as diverse as Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Matchstick Men, Galaxy Quest and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The man deserves accolades, he deserves acclaim, and here’s hoping after his glorious 2008 output (he’s still got Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon hitting screens in December) Rockwell finally gets what should have come to him ages ago, namely on Oscar-nod.

Choke is not for the faint of heart. Gregg goes for the jugular time after time, the film’s humor based in emotionally shattering (sometimes sexually explicit) pain that won’t be for everyone. But who says movies have to please all of the masses all of the time? I certainly don’t, and if audiences can’t handle a film as frank, belligerent, honest, provocative, strident, uproarious, off-putting, emotional and, yes, sweet as this one then I hope the popcorn they’re gorging themselves on makes them retch the entire drive home.

- review reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle 

Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)

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