ScoobyWell
Great visuals, story delivers no surprises
Beystiman
It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
Taraparain
Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.
njtrekkie
I just finished watching this film, and can say that this is a "B" movie in every sense of the phrase. Andie MacDowell (complete with Southern drawl) plays Elizabeth "Bessie" Faro, a woman whose bad boy husband Johnny (played by Viggo Mortensen) is killed in Mexico. While going through his affairs, Bessie discovers that Johnny had money hidden in accounts all over the world. As she globe trots through the world, she discovers along the way that (surprise surprise) Johnny is still alive. Soon Bessie starts to track Johnny down in order to learn why he did what he did. Along the way, she meets a doctor (Liam Neeson in a wasted role) whose organization is tied to Bessie's husband. This is a film of wasted talent. MacDowell's performance feels like she phoned in her lines, Mortensen comes across as wooden (think of Adam West's portrayal of Batman) and the rest of the no-name cast is just as terrible. Only Neeson's performance is worth the mention in this turkey. Originally released in 1992, this film feels like it was made years earlier (references to East Berlin) and may well have been the first leading part for MacDowell. Both Neeson and Mortensen would struggle for years before either of them carved their own niche in Hollywood.
krcovil
A great idea for a movie, but a terrible script. Watched this movie on Netflix under the title "Deception" because I love the actors in this film, but again, a terrible script! Do you really expect me to believe that MacDowell's character would seriously attack an armed gunman who just shot her husband and then throw herself over her dead husband's body (who, by the way, just faked his death in order to dump her and her children with nothing to live on) when she's got three kids waiting for her to come home? She seemed to take all of that rather well when she saw him for the first time in Cairo and just wandered off with him, holding hands, on their way to his little palace... I don't think so...I would have beat him down for deserting me and my kids and for forcing my children to deal with the "death" of their father and at such a young age. Let's don't forget that he left them with nothing and didn't give a crap about them--at all! The characters just aren't believable or reliable because the dialog is plain awful and the characters are not well-developed at all. The story between Liam Neeson's character and Andie MacDowell's character could have been great but it was too choppy to relate to. I would not watch this movie again and I would not recommend it to anyone. Sorry Liam, you're one of my favorites but this movie was a waste of time.
gavin6942
When Bessie Faro's (Andie MacDowell) husband Johnny (Viggo Mortensen) dies in a plane crash in Veracruz, Mexico, she finds that his air cargo business is deeply in the red. When she visits the airline's terminal in Veracruz, she discovers her husband was pumping large amounts of money into bank accounts all over the world.I watched this as part of an appreciation for Liam Neeson, and was sad to see this really was not a big role for him. Of course, it was an even smaller role for Mortensen (who was not yet famous), but this is not a Neeson film. Now, that being said, it is still a decent mystery.I would really like to see this again and get a better feel for it. I get the impression it was not widely appreciated in its day and could get a better hearing now (2014).
ccthemovieman-1
Being in the USA, I know this film under the title, "Deception."The first half of this movie was very good, very interesting, but the final segment was a big, big disappointment. Overall, it's kind of a strange, confusing story yet fascinating for the most part. I liked the baseball card angle, even if most other people didn't.When "Bessie Faro" a.k.a. "Rubie Cairo" (Andie MacDowell) finally finds her husband, the film goes to pieces.The scenery is great to view - scenes from Veracruz, Berlin, Athens and capped off by some magnificent shots of the Great Pyramids outside Cairo. Liam Neeson did his normal superb acting job and creating a likable character.Boy, this could have been a super movie with a much-different and better done finale. The premise and the scenery were the highlights; the script, the lowlight. However, I'll think you'll find overall it's still a lot better than the national critics would have you believe. It's worth a look. Just expect the film to go downhill the last third.
