Synopsis
A political thriller steeped in illegal oil trading, the Russian Mafia, and governmental cover-ups.
2005 Directed by Harvey Kahn
A political thriller steeped in illegal oil trading, the Russian Mafia, and governmental cover-ups.
El acuerdo, The Deal - Il compromesso, Contrato de Risco, The Deal - Im Visier der Öl-Mafia, Az alku, Dohoda, Сделка, Угода, Kontrakt
Christian Slater performance ranking
Decided to do a double feature of this and Very Bad Things today, to cover Christian Slater’s two executive producer credits. This was the more obscure and quieter of the two, so it felt like the better one to watch first.
Director Harvey Kahn had only did TV movies, and from the very start it has the flat cheap look of a bad TV show. There’s maybe one or two bits of interesting cinematography, but it only barely rises above the level of a TV movie.
The plot is a political thriller, and the emphasis on oil shenanigans with the Russians and the Middle East places this squarely in the mid-2000’s Iraq War era. But there’s…
This movie started out with some of the most impressively terrible dialogue I've seen in a film in quite some time. You can actively see the actors struggle with trying to make it sound like stuff actual human beings might say (except for Selma Blair, who I'm convinced just ad libbed the shit out of her scenes. Which is why she's by far the best part of the movie...)
Happily, after the first hour or so it settles into a surprisingly decent economic thriller with an appropriately cynical "happy" ending.
But is the 45 minutes of "fairly good" worth the 60 minutes of "awful" to "adequate" that precedes it?
I don't know. That's more your problem at this point...
Квелый и сумбурный типа триллер про воротил с Уолл-стрита, снятый в Канаде. Примерно час Кристиан Слейтер, Сельма Блэр и другие люди пиздят в офисах, звонят по телефону, смотрят документы и проверяют НЕЗАКОННУЮ сделку с нефтью, пока не появляется русская мафия и не придает этой трехкопеечной скуке какое-то подобие драйва. Из плюсов – Лоджа привычно показывает зловещее лицо.
Christian Slater and Selma Blair star in this thoroughly by-the-numbers political thriller... might be stretching the word.
A movie so forgettable, that several times I forgot to write a review for it. That's all the words I can muster.
A bit convoluted in a novelistic way. The direction plays the various angles of the story like different film genres making a good portion of this feel a bit schizophrenic as it jumps between corporate espionage, political thriller and indie rom-com. Slater agains plays a guy who's good at making deals with money. It politically wants to say something about international oil trade and Wall Street with throwaway comments about the 1% but ultimately is more interested in building up to the formality of third act suspense, with a cynical coda tacked on about the nature of politics.