Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 16-OCT-2007
Media Type: DVD

Amazon.com:
The Hoax is a happy surprise. Surprise because, for once, having a film's release date bumped back half a year didn't mean it's a dog. Happy because Lasse Hallström's dancing-on-eggshells comedy about a notorious literary scandal of the 1970s is bounteously entertaining, with more solid laughs and certainly slyer wit than, say, the latest Will Ferrell romp.

The subject is the world-shaking con an unsuccessful writer named Clifford Irving (Richard Gere) ran on some supposedly sharp cookies in the highest echelons of Manhattan publishing. Irving persuaded McGraw-Hill and Life magazine that ultra-reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes had selected him to transcribe his memoirs. It's pure balderdash, a desperate improvisation by a glib-talker who's perennially one jump ahead of the repo men. But the epic audacity of Irving's scam, the quicksilver way he weaves imaginary and accidental real-life details into beguiling patterns, and the legendary self-isolation of his supposed subject all conspire to keep the fiction afloat ... for a while.

This story isn't new to cinema, though few reviewers seem aware of that. In 1973 Orson Welles told it as part of F for Fake, a kaleidoscopic meditation on art, forgery, and the slipperiness of media, in which the real-life Irving was a semi-witting participant. But there's no need to beat up on The Hoax for being inferior to that postmodern masterpiece. Hallström and a deft cast do a killer job on the skyscraper corporate world where there are always more people in the room than there are useful purposes for them to serve (see especially Hope Davis, Stanley Tucci, and Zjelko Ivanek); Marcia Gay Harden summons up a daft Viking serenity as spouse Edith Irving, a.k.a. "Helga R. Hughes"; and Alfred Molina rates a supporting Oscar nod for his balletic suspension between bemusement and panic attack as Dick Suskind, Irving's researcher accomplice and conscience-in-default. As for the con artist in chief, Richard Gere dials back the narcissism of previous performances to limn a schmuck just suave enough to seduce even himself. --Richard T. Jameson

Rating : - "Oh, what a tangled web..."
In the early 1970's, a struggling novelist by the name of Clifford Irving came up with a humdinger of a way to sell his next book: he duped his publishers and the world-at-large into believing that Howard Hughes had personally authorized him to pen the reclusive billionaire`s much sought-after autobiography. Through elaborate trickery and some shrewd undercover work, Irving managed to bamboozle a whole cadre of literary agents and publishers into thinking that both he and the story he was telling were on the up-and-up. In fact, the only people who knew what was really going on were his wife, his mistress and his best friend and fellow author, Richard Suskind, who was roped into helping Irving pull off his mind-boggling ruse.

"The Hoax" joins such recent films as "Catch Me If You Can" and "Color Me Kubrick" in its portrayal of a true-life figure who weaves an ever more tangled web of lies and deceit to achieve fame, fortune or, at the very least, a little boost for his own deflated ego. For there's something about the human psyche that allows us to believe we can get away with fooling all of the people all of the time and not get caught in the end. Isn't that the thinking that goes into virtually every crime that's committed - this sense that we can game the system and the mindless dolts who operate within it without ourselves becoming exposed in the process? Yet, paradoxically, there is also the adrenalin-rush created by the suspicion ever lurking in the recesses of our minds that we won't be able to pull it off in the end. Much of the fun of "The Hoax" lies in watching as these two concomitant emotions do battle on the field of Irving's conscience - his intoxication with himself growing the longer he is able to pull off his scam without getting caught, and his flights of panic becoming ever more pronounced as the scheme begins to gradually unravel around him.

As Irving, Richard Gere, who has rarely been better on screen, captures this manic energy to a tee, his sense of personal conquest reflected in the barest twinkle in his eyes. Writer William Wheeler and director Lasse Hallstrom keep the tone light and fast-paced for the most part so as to avoid turning the material into a heavy-handed ethical statement about the cost of dishonesty and lying, though the last half hour cuts deep as a cautionary tale for all would-be frauds and phonies out there who might be planning a similar stunt. The movie is particularly hilarious in the scenes involving Suskind, the friend who can't resist the lure of untold riches but who clearly lacks the nerves of iron one requires for a life of crime. Alfred Molina, with his nervous tics, deer-in-the-headlights expression and beads of sweat constantly pouring down his forehead, is a joy to behold in every scene he's in. Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, Stanley Tucci and Eli Wallach in a delightful cameo appearance round out the excellent cast.

By the end of the movie, the filmmakers have done a pretty effective job blurring the lines between what really happened and what would appear to be the elaborate paranoid delusions of a man who has lied so much that he can no longer differentiate fact from fantasy. In the final analysis, then, "The Hoax" is a morality tale about the perils of dishonesty and deception, as evidenced by the fact that Clifford's book and its influence on Nixon helped to usher in the Watergate era (the little-known connection between the billionaire and the president is just one of the many stunning revelations to be found in this film). It's a legacy that Irving and, by extension, the rest of us have had to live with for close to forty years now.