Rama’s SCREEN

CHOKE is one of the craziest comedy movies you’ll ever see. Its brutal, raw, sexual energy arouse together with its brutal, raw and sexual jokes that will keep you entertained and indulged. The temptation of this movie’s sinful nature is irresistible, it’s… practically addictive. Gotta give you a heads up though… this movie is for adults only. CHOKE may just be this year’s sleeper hit. You will laugh out loud.

A wickedly colorful dark comedy about mothers and sons, sexual compulsion, and the sordid underbelly of Colonial theme parks. Victor Mancini (Rockwell), a sex-addicted med-school dropout, who keeps his increasingly deranged mother, Ida (Huston), in an expensive private medical hospital by working days as a historical reenactor at a Colonial Williamsburg theme park. At night Victor runs a scam by deliberately choking in upscale restaurants to form parasitic relationships with the wealthy patrons who “save” him. When, in a rare lucid movement, Ida reveals that she has withheld the shocking truth of his father’s identity, Victor enlists the aid of his best friend, Denny (Henke) and his mother’s beautiful attending physician, Dr. Paige Marshall (Macdonald), to solve the mystery before the truth of his possibly divine parentage is lost forever.

Based on the novel I haven’t read by author Chuck Palahniuk who penned Fight Club, which is probably the reason why me and other guys would wanna check out CHOKE. But I think actor turned director Clark Gregg who also makes an appearance in this movie has done a pretty good job in adapting the story, those of you who’ve read the book might beg to differ

The vulgar humor is not for everybody, if you’re conservative, then you’d probably find it to be annoying because it does happen constantly throughout the entire thing and that’s mostly what this movie depends on.
The movie graphically shows flashes of the people who the main characters has had sex with… and he has been around. He even bangs all the staff members of the nursing home which takes care of his mother. Get ready for lots and lots of nudity, and it doesn’t even discriminate age, so beware of saggy boobs.

The story centers around Sam Rockwell’s character, Victor Mancini who is a sex addict and a big time loser. His addiction comes from the loneliness stemming from years of not having a decent childhood and not knowing the origin of who he really was. If some people find drugs to be a getaway, or a channel to feel something again and to distract them from the troubles of life, Victor has sex with strangers just to feel that ‘perfect beautiful’ climax, a point where he feels like he actually means something and not just some fatherless bastard.
When his best friend falls in love with a girl, he feels threatened due to fear of becoming lonely again.

This is Sam Rockwell’s movie, this is the performance of a lifetime. I can’t imagine anybody else playing Victor Mancini other than Rockwell,… just like it’d be impossible to imagine some other dude playing Scarface instead of Al Pacino.
Rockwell’s got the fast talk, the wit, the look of an addict and he can be a jerk one minute and he can be sentimental the next. Angelica Huston is a rare gem, what a great and talented actress. She plays the mother who taught her son to con and scam people, resulting in Victor Mancini not having a normal childhood like every other kid… that’s why he grows up not being able to amount to anything because conning or scamming is all he knows how to do. Kelly McDonald, the Scottish beauty who can do American accent lights up the screen as the mysterious doctor who may be falling for Victor Mancini. She’s his kryptonite and his crush, he can’t ‘get it up’ when she’s around.

I’m not sure how much of the movie is loyal to the book because once again, I’ve never read the book. But to me, it seems like the character just can’t seem to let go of the past, in fact, he lets it determine his fate and just gives in to it. The mysterious doctor who he likes so much has to tell a lie just to make him stop dwelling in what’s already gone. There are also some blasphemous jokes at the cost of calling Victor Mancini a descendant of the holy bloodline. The patients around him make it an obsession. Little does he know that it’s the mysterious doctor’s method of letting Victor know that he has the capacity to be less of an A*hole and more of a good person if he chooses to.
CHOKE is one of my favorite movies of 2008. I enjoy every minute.

* Place the cursor on the image below to check my grade for this film