Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Deceived Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson April 12, 2018

Touchstone Pictures' psychological thriller Deceived (1991) was a definite change-of-pace for star Goldie Hawn. Having spent much of her career appearing in comedies, the Oscar winner decided to try a different project with more serious and dramatic material. According to film critic Steven Rea, when Touchstone sent market-researchers to test a focus group about what genre it would place The Mrs. (Deceived's original title), participants mistakenly thought it was a comedy! (It's not known whether Hawn was cast at that time but the studio didn't want the film publicized with a comedic theme.) Originally, producer Michael Finnell sent British director Damian Harris (The Rachel Papers) the first-draft script for The Mrs. by Mary Agnes Donoghue, who also penned the story. Harris liked it enough to make the film but wanted to change aspects of the two main characters. Donoghue had written The Mrs. to center around a young woman in her twenties who gets mixed up with an older man. Harris thought it would be better to have Hawn's Adrienne Saunders get married later (in her forties) to a mystery man so he entrusted Ghost's Bruce Joel Rubin (credited under the pseudonym Derek Saunders) to do a complete rewrite.

As Deceived begins, Adrienne arrives at a posh New York restaurant awaiting her blind date, who never shows. In one of the back tables sits Jack Saunders (John Heard, taking a break portraying Peter McCallister in between the first two Home Alone films). Jack alerts the waitress that he wants her to get Adrienne's attention. Jack is a handsome and charming man who says that he's an art curator, which clicks with Adrienne since she restores fine art. The next day Jack arrives at Adrienne's museum office with a Greek amphora. The two hit it off again and a Chinese take-out dinner on the couch soon turns into a marriage proposal. The narrative flashes forward six years to the birthday party of the Saunders' bright five-year-old daughter, Mary (Ashley Peldon). Marriage, family, and professional life are all blissful for the Saunders until Tomasz, (Jan Rubes), one of their museum workers, is found hanging in a possible suicide. At the center of the case is a $4.5 million Egyptian necklace of gold and lapis lazuli that was purchased for the musuem's exhibit (which Tomasz had been inspecting) but is later determined to be a forgery. While Jack is not a prime suspect in Tomasz's death, his behavior grows increasingly stranger by each move he makes. He tells Adrienne that he needs to go to Boston for an event and will buy her a gift there. However, Adrienne's friend and co-worker Charlotte (Robin Bartlett) claims that she saw Jack at a store in New York City on the same day he was supposed to be in Boston. Adrienne finds spurious business cards in Jack's coat pocket and walks in on him making phone calls at odd hours.

Is Adrienne being deceived? I don't want to go into the rest of the details of Deceived's narrative for those who haven't seen it only to say that a life-changing event occurs in the middle that flips things around (literally and figuratively). Deceived is a well-crafted and highly enjoyable thriller that will keep you engrossed in the story and characters, even if you're several steps ahead of them. The third act is heavy on exposition and relies on genre tropes to generate surprises and jump-scares. The climax is ridiculously plotted and could have used a better chase scene to reach a resolution.

A successful or doomed marriage?

Deceived did respectable business at the US box office, hauling in nearly $29 million. My hypothesis is that it could have performed better commercially and critically with smarter writing. The latter was a big beef with the critics who reviewed the picture. Malcolm Johnson of the the Hartford Courant wrote that the "staging of the climax falls flat" and this "drew hoots from the dazed audience." A negative review by Marshall Fine of the Gannett News Service that was syndicated across the country did not help. Perhaps the worst harm done done to the film in print was a headline that ran in one paper from Roger Ebert's syndicated 2/4 review: "Ending of 'Deceived' ruins whole picture." The movie did have its supporters, however. Steve Persall of the Tampa Bay Times praised it as "the best first-date movie to flash on screens in awhile. Stylish and intelligent with plenty of arm-clutching moments." Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer was impressed by the suspense: "Not since Dead Calm has a film seemingly come out of nowhere to scare the bejesus out of audiences with such skillful abandon."

Would Deceived have been better had it soley used Donoghue's script? Very likely. Although I haven't read either Donoghue's original script or Rubin's rewrite, all indications by those familiar with both is that Donoghue's is more psychological than Rubin's, whose is the more formulaic. Obviously, the casting would have been different had Donoghue's script been shot. What did Donoghue think of the changes that Rubin and Miller made? "A lot of the stuff that really did work in the original script was no longer there. Which is why the first half of the movie is comprehensible," she revealed to Bonnie Britton of The Indianapolis Star. "A million little plot points got lost in the shuffle. In a movie, these things count. You can't cover them up with visuals." On the positive side, she admitted to The Palm Beach Post's Michael Mills that while she wasn't thrilled with the changes, she still thinks Deceived is a "fun" genre exercise.

Deceived Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Kino Lorber brings Deceived to Blu-ray on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-25. The main feature boasts an average video bitrate of 22158 kbps. I first saw Deceived in HD on a VOD service and the Kino transfer is the more satisfying of the two. The only scene that looks like there may be DNR applied is the restaurant scene after the main titles (though red and black pop out in that scene with sharp delineation). As Harris explains in his commentary track, the opening credits display pentimento. There is a dark and abstract grainy image that slowly transforms into a bunch of black umbrellas on a rainy street (see Screenshot #18). This is a fitting yet different portrait of the New York art world that's depicted in the film. Clint Eastwood's frequent camera operator and director of photography Jack N. Green lensed Deceived and he does a masterful job with the monochrome look as well as with light and shadows. Red and dark green also stand out (see especially #5). The relatively coarse grain structure is largely stable throughout except for some jittery moments in the middle of the frame. There are some specs and blips here and there but Kino has done a very good job of transferring Deceived to Blu-ray. How did Green's photography look to a critic's eye in 1991? Writing in the Chicago Tribune, Dave Kehr observed: "Director Harris seems to have restricted his contributions to applying a burnished British look, in the manner of Adrian Lyne's Fatal Attraction, to the otherwise routine action. The colors are dark and deeply saturated, the lighting low and largely from behind, and the camera movements are slow and creepy."

Kino has provided only eight chapter selections.

Deceived Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Kino encodes Deceived's original Dolby 2.0 soundtrack as a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Surround (1560 kbps, 16-bit). Overall, there is very nice and subtle separation of dialogue and f/x along the front speakers. Dialogue is intelligible but not always audible. There's some fluctuation between normal speaking voices, murmurs, and hushed tones. Thomas Newman's still-unreleased score sounds marvelous. Harris discusses his admiration for Newman's music in two very different films prior to 1991. He also explains how he incorporated Newman's preexisting music into a temp mix. Stylistically, Newman patterned some of that older music into his score for Deceived but to my ears, it actually presages the kind of writing for different instruments he would do in the many films he's scored in the 1990s and 2000s. The score adds a lot to the mood of the film and the characters' personalities.

English SDH are available for main feature.

Deceived Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by Director Damian Harris - Harris delivers a very informative track about what went on behind the scenes while he made Deceived. The director is recorded on his own and not joined by a moderator (as is often the case with the label's commentaries). Harris makes some factual errors when recalling certain details about different movies and dates but he's very specific about facts and figures when focusing on Deceived. There are a couple of gaps but he continues speaking till early in the end credits. In English, not subtitled.

• Original Theatrical Trailer (1:47, 480i) - a full-frame trailer for Deceived that contains both grain and video noise.

• Bonus Previews - several of the trailers for Kino Lorber's other catalog titles can be accessed on the main menu.

Deceived Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Deceived is a flawed but still fun and engaging thriller from Damian Harris that showcases two very fine lead performances by Goldie Hawn and John Heard. Kino Lorber delivers a splendid transfer and an above-average audio presentation, although I wouldn't have minded a 5.1 remix. Damian Harris is wonderful to listen to as I plan to give his commentary another play. Hopefully, Kino or another label will get around to releasing his feature debut, The Rachel Papers. Hollywood produced a bevy of thrillers about problematic marital relations in the early nineties and I think Deceived is a solid entry in that group. You should also check out Still of the Night (1982) and The Stepfather (1987) for a few of the movie's forerunners. For fans of Deceived's two stars, this Kino release is worth buying and comes RECOMMENDED.