There's a certain anachronistic value system at work in "Deception" that's both quaint and slightly annoying. So many things about this film seem so outlandishly yesterday as to prompt the sotto voce notion, "Are you guys for real?"
But director Marcel Langenegger, making his feature debut, and screenwriter Mark Bomback are indeed for real. Totally straight-faced (if not downright serious), they keep pushing the buttons of outdated-ness with diligent insistence. This, including the whiff of mothballs rising from the title, would have been fine if we were in the 1980s; in fact, I kept waiting for Michael Douglas and Demi Moore to show up. But in this day and age, it's hard to get excited about suits from Wall Street getting steamy in hotel rooms, then becoming involved in a nasty cat-and-mouse game of sex and murder and money. I mean, really! Didn't all that stuff go out when the millenium came in? Has mankind made no progress?
Not this time, apparently.