How do you make a novel featuring sex addiction, the Heimlich Maneuver, consensual rape, mental illness, and fraud into a Hollywood movie? Just ask first-time writer/director Allan Gregg, who adapted Chuck (Fight Club) Palahniuk's book Choke – possibly his darkest and most twisted novel to date – into a surprisingly gentle film.
Gregg (who deals himself a hilarious bit part in the movie) accomplished this by not only removing some of the more bizarre elements of the book, but has reworked Choke into the romantic-comedy-on-the-edge-of-reality it always tried to be. This, in tandem with some great performances from leads Sam Rockwell, Brad William-Henke, Kelly MacDonald and Anjelica Huston, makes for a surprisingly appealing movie.
Even still, Choke receives an 'R' rating for strong sexual content, nudity and language.
What's Choke About?
Victor Mancini (Rockwell) has a few problems. A medical school dropout who works as a tour guide in a pioneer village park, he cadges money – and love – from total strangers by pretending to choke to death in restaurants. This ensures that his demented mother (Anjelica Huston) is safe in a private hospital (where Victor's nailed 90% of the female staff), while he trolls sex addiction group meetings in order to meet women.
While trying to keep his chronic masturbator pal (Brad William Henke) out of trouble, Mancini also attempts to discover from his increasingly addled mother just who his father is. In addition, he meets a young doctor (Kelly MacDonald), who figures him out within 5 minutes. Not surprisingly, she becomes the first woman he's ever truly fallen in love with. But Victor also begins to develop . . . technical issues when they're in intimate situations, which mess him up even more.
If all that wasn't enough, Victor discovers he might be the son of Jesus Christ.
Choke: Dark, Screwball Comedy
Choke is quite possibly Palahniuk's most bizarre novel; certainly if you like it, you'll like his other books. Gregg removed some of the wilder elements – such as Victor's turns in the stocks or the ambiguity concerning another character's origins – but didn't clean Palahniuk's narrative up completely in search of that elusive PG rating (good luck!). This flick is more a dramedy than an out-and-out laugh fest: the laughs are leavened by the shocking situations that create them.
The leads are uniformly excellent. Rockwell does a great job of handling Victor's character development throughout the film, as he begins to question the string of events that brought him to where he is now. At heart, Victor is a compulsive liar – since he feels he can only be loved by lying – but he soon finds himself in a place where his lies no longer help him.
Henke steals scenes as the sexoholic who finds love in the strangest of places, and Huston (The Grifters, Prizzi's Honor) brings yet another stellar performance to the silver screen. Kelly MacDonald owns her role as the first person who confronts Victor with who he is, while harbouring secrets of her own.
The Final Analysis
Choke isn't a roll-on-the-floor comedy; most of the laugh-out-loud moments derive from the painful positions that Victor finds himself in. Allan Gregg adapted the novel into a pretty tight screenplay, and pulls great performances from his leads. It's not easy to make such messed-up characters sympathetic, but Gregg and his cast pull it off.
While Choke isn't the most daring film out this year, it's a surprisingly tender adaptation of one sick mofo of a novel. For that reason, it gets a 7/10.
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