The Hoax

Richard Gere, Alfred Molina and a bunch of people I didn't recognise in what the trailer assured me would be some sort of comedy/heist movie. I didn't know much about this prior to seeing it, other than it was the true story of the Clifford Irving, who wrote the completely fictitious Howard Hughes biography. The film is not what the trailer advertised. That's not to say I'm annoyed (you know how I get with misleading trailers...), because it's a very good story and it's well told, but just be warned. This is not a comedy caper. It's actually quite dark in places.

The story does try to elicit some sympathy for Irving, claiming that his publisher backed out of a book deal with him, but for the most part he comes across as pulling the fraud simply because he can. There's a bit about wanting revenge against Howard Hughes because of a ruined holiday, where Hughes threw everyone out of his hotel at three in the morning because he wanted the pool to himself, but even there Irving is still shown to admire Hughes. "Now that's power...," he muses at the silhouette of Hughes in the penthouse apartment.

Richard Gere plays Clifford Irving very well. Alfred Molina plays Irving's friend, Richard Susskind, who helped him research Hughes and co-wrote the biography. He's also struggling with a dilemma, which I won't spoil (but it's funny). There's no moment where one actor outshines the other, they compliment each other very well, stepping back from the lime light when the story needs it, shining when the plot calls for it.

For a film about true events, it makes some silly errors, and I'm not just talking about the lever style door handles in the White House that should have been round knobs (thank IMDB for that one). For example, as the end credits roll there's the usual "what happened next" text explaining what happened to the people involved, the usual fare for a film based on real events. But the film claims that Clifford Irving is still trying to get the hoax biography published. It's been in print for two years. So either the film makers didn't check their facts, or this film has been sitting on a shelf in some studio vault for yonks and no-one bothered to update it.

Score: C++
I enjoyed it, it just wasn't the film I was expecting.

OQ: "It's the most important book of the twentieth century..."