Actor and now director Clark Gregg’s debut feature “Choke” (based on Chuck Palahnuik’s novel) is always entertaining. I can say that much. What Gregg’s made is a reasonably enjoyable, and very twisted romantic comedy, peopled by some true whack-jobs whose lives are edging towards the brink, psychologically and otherwise.

Sex addict Vincent Mancini (Sam Rockwell) can’t seem to give up his bad habit of engaging in anonymous trysts with strangers. He’s a screwed-up guy, to be sure — after a childhood spent tagging on the heels of a fugitive mother (Angelica Huston), and unsure of his paternal origins — Vincent’s sense of self-worth has hit rock-bottom. Still, as an adult, Vincent feels a deep loyalty towards his mother, and tends to her devotedly as she’s slipping away with dementia at a psychiatric hospital. A pretty, slightly off-kilter gal at the hospital, Paige (Kelly Macdonald) takes a fancy to Vincent, but takes a circuitous emotional route to winning his heart — trying to convince him of the possiblity that he could be a direct descendent of Christ himself (courtesy of evidence of the genetic heisting of a certain, ahem, holy relic gene-spliced with her mother’s egg cells). This throws Vincent into a tailspin of identity and conscience, and he can’t stand that his only friend, Denny (Brad William Henke) — a serial masturbator — is learning to fly right, and drifting away in a serious romantic relationship. Little by little, Vincent loses any footing on himself, a sense of his parents, his past.

Gregg’s movie is unapolegetically raunchy — with frequent bursts of sex and male-fantasy nudity — and frequently lewd and funny. It’s generally well written, but it’s also oddly unimaginative in the telling. Gregg’s style is conventional, and so are the performances. Angelica Huston, as Vincent’s unbalanced mother, comes off best — funny and whimsical — but the rest of the bunch is trying for an understated cheekiness mixed with genuine heart that doesn’t mesh at all. And as entertaining as Sam Rockwell is on screen, the actor doesn’t have much of a range: His Vincent, all mopey, shambling, and droll — is the sex-addict equivalent of the roles he played “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” and last year’s demon-child botch-job “Joshua,” among a slew of others. Rockwell better break the mold, or he’s going to lose this fan.

Choke (3 out of 5 stars)
Director: Clark Gregg
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Kelly Macdonald, Angelica Huston, Brad William Henke

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Reviews, Sundance, Festivals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.