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Acting
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Directing
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Story
Starring: Goldie Hawn, John Heard, Robin Bartlett
Director: Damian Harris
Running Time: 104 mins
Deceived is an American film about a wife who, after hearing the news of a death closely related to her past, sees her stable marriage fall to pieces, as she begins to doubt the reality of her life.
This was such a boring movie. There are countless films through history which play on the rupture of the strongest bond in marriage, introducing devastating suspicion and doubt into what was once an idyllic world of love. However, Deceived is a film that tells that story in the most tedious, predictable fashion, and never really gets off the ground at all.
I’ll preface this all by saying that Deceived really isn’t worth your time. Even if you’re a Goldie Hawn fan, this is far from her best work, and the film will feel like far more of a waste of your time than showing any genuinely new side to her acting repertoire.
Slow-moving, pointlessly moody and full of abrupt, unearned twists and turns, Deceived is a consistently underwhelming watch that struggles to really prove its own worth at any point. It starts off in fairly generic style, with a whirlwind romance that leaves lead Hawn swept off her feet by her new husband, all building towards the first fairly obvious twist of fate.
John Heard, while fitting the bill as the charming, down-to-earth husband and father figure that draws Hawn in, is far from the threatening villain that this film really needs. There’s none of the emotional distress of a great paranoia thriller here, largely due to a screenplay that’s very thin on the ground, but also due to the fact that you don’t believe that the enemy Hawn is going up against is really all that horrifying.
That leads to a film which is consistently stuck in its attempts to thrill or frighten you, but never has the resources in any of the screenplay, the performances or the cinematic style to actually do that – making for a painfully frustrating, and ultimately tedious watch. So, that’s why I’m giving Deceived a 4.8 overall.
