Andie Macdowell Movie:

		List Price: $14.98		Label: Lions Gate Salesrank: 58326 Released: June 22, 2004
		Our Price: $8.01
		Used Price: $7.75
		MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Media: DVD

Deception Reviews:
What a life
2008-08-23 - This had to have been a made for TV movie. If you want a good laugh
then watch this. This movie goes in the cheesiest movie section of any DVD collection.Deception

dont waste your money
2008-01-01 - I bought this movie looking at the unbelievable cast Mortensen, McDowell and Neeson. It had an implausible plot and dreadful acting. Felt like these outstanding actors needed to make a quick movie to pay the bills that week.

Screenwriter must be a fan of Lifetime Telivision
2007-11-01 - DECEPTION really is a mess of a movie. This is the type of film you would watch on the Lifetime Channel on a Saturday afternoon - overwrought drama, rather bad acting, unconvincing (or, in DECEPTION's case, improbable) storylines, and self-conscious, let's make a statement about the ills of society and what we can do to fix them kind of script writing. It's a bad movie.

The story revolves around a surburban wife, after her husband staged his own death, discovering that her husband had a lot of dark secrets in his life involving gambling, baseball cards, and secret bank accounts. The storyline tries to combine two totally different plotlines - the effect of the wife discovering her husband's dark secret, and then what the husband did to get all the money.

The only real redeeming factor is Liam Neeson. Even Viggo Mortenson, ala Aragorn, doesn't do much here. He hangs around looking menancing. Andie MacDowell, famous model, has about as much acting talent as one would expect from the model (ala none), and brings very little to the table on an already weak and improbably storyline.

Apparently, the film was released as RUBY CAIRO internationally, but as DECEPTION in the US. According to a review on Amazon, they cut 20 minutes, including a sex scene. The cut material may or may not add to the film (I haven't seen it). Probably does.

Then again, the material they left in is so subpar why waste another twenty minutes of your life on this trash?


Great Potential - but Poor Character Depth
2006-06-11 - It's a shame how US audiences - perhaps because we are many ways more "sensitive" than audiences in some other parts of the world - sometimes get watered down versions of movies. Deception is the US release of the movie "Ruby Cairo" starring Andie MacDowell, Liam Neeson, and Viggo Mortensen. Normally I try not to give away any plot in my review, but in this case pretty much every review (and every box) of this DVD gives away half the story, so I'll at least go with that.

Andie plays Bessie Faro, a "regular housewife" who is struggling to raise 3 kids in a run down town. Her husband, Johnny, is a wastrel. She knew this from the beginning - she knew he gambled, he spent money like water, and he was undependable. She says several times in voice-overs that she was along for the ride and didn't mind that there was little future for them or their kids. It's not that she's unintelligent - she just doesn't have a sense of responsibility. Since Johnny has even less, it's not a wild stretch that they ended up together.

Unfortunately for her, Johnny runs a small plane company and his plane crashes in Mexico. She goes down to see the crash and to bury him. She realizes that he left behind STACKS of bills, and she even comments that maybe at this point she should just drown the kids and shoot herself. She doesn't say this with a lot of emotion, either. I understand of course that she's in grief for her husband, but she doesn't show much grief either. My boyfriend, who watched this with me, commented several times that she really didn't seem like a widow who had cared much for her husband.

Bessie discovers in Mexico that her husband has a goodly amount of money hidden away in the bank there - and finds the key to tracking down his other accounts. I realize this is a fun "visit exotic locations around the world" plot device - but it makes NO sense. Why would someone personally fly from country to country to close down accounts? If she really got a nice windfall from the first bank, couldn't she just hire a lawyer to do that for her remotely? They could have played it many ways - had her try that and get told she must go in person for "country legal reasons" - or maybe she could say in a voiceover that she "felt like it was saying goodby to her husband, to walk in his footsteps". Instead they make it seem like this is the normal way that people do banking.

Most of the visits are simply "photo shoots" where you barely get a sense of the country she is in. Finally, though, in Greece she runs into a teller who inexplicably violates a few privacy rules to move the plot along, and she makes a pretty inane decision to hop on a cargo ship instead of flying ahead to meet it. There are a few more very questionable plot developments further ahead, but I won't spoil that part here.

Mixed in with this story is Liam, playing a "do gooder" Doctor who is trying to feed the world - or is he? He seems pretty mixed up with the path she's taking, and his affections towards Bessie seem rather sudden and at times forced. Is he making a play to gain her confidence?

I really did want to love this movie, because I love the "on the trail" style movies, and I love movies with twists and counter-twists. It sounds odd, but the plot of this one was just too "simple". The outcome was fairly obvious early on, and I kept waiting for something new to spring out. While you can see the Bessie-Johnny attraction with them both being so careless, it also made it hard to really relate to her. She was going to abandon her kids? She took off on them for weeks to travel the world, without much regard for her own safety? Her lack of knowledge about how to be safe in some of the areas she visited was pretty staggering, especially for someone who apparently had lived in not-great locations. There seems to be little motive at all for Johnny's abandonment of his family. Did he ever love her? Why did he take off like that? Does he really want her back?

It was a great basis for a story - and if the characters had been developed more fully, I really would have loved it. They were just painted too shallowly, though. Viggo and Liam both try to infuse their characters with depth, but with the dialogue they had to say, they're only cardboard cutouts of an "Irish Doctor" and a "Only Cares About Himself Scumbag". In between them, Andie is going for the every day woman caught in a spiralling nightmare, but she really doesn't even seem to care what's happening.

A good rental for a rainy day, but not one I'd really watch repeatedly for its depth of character.

A good rainy afternoon, suspense drama that is worthy of praise.
2006-05-17 - Back in the late 80's and early 90's a few Japanese producers were keen to break into mainstream hollywood. Sadly, the films the Japanese got involved with were things like Last Action Hero, Solar Crisis and this.....Ruby Cairo. Too bad they lost their shirts.

Ruby Cairo, however, deserves a lot more praise than the aforementioned.

Andie MacDowell stars as a housewife with three kids living out in suburbia near the airport. Her seemingly no good husband,played by Viggo Mortenson in one of his very early roles, runs his own airplane salvage company and spends months away from home.

When her husband burns up in a crash in Mexico his remains are delivered to MacDowell and she goes across the border to bury him.
Upon her arrival she finds that her husband had a secret office, some very unsavory business partners and a set of baseball cards that lead his distraught wife all over the world to try and find out just what her husband was up to. Along the way she runs into Liam Neeson who may or may not be connected to her dead husbands evil deeds.

The movie is named Ruby Cairo in various other parts of the world but was labled Deception in the U.S. I have no idea if it every made it to the theaters in America but it had quite a good run on cable tv for a number of years which made it somewhat of a minor cult movie.

The movie itself is not an award winner but there is something about the story that keeps the viewer entertained. Andie Macdowell does a good job playing the naieve housewife who slowly realizes she has been made a fool of. Mortenson's part is sadly way to short and perhaps the back story of his wheeling and dealing might have enhanced the film a bit.

The soundtrack should also be noted as a rare one by Oscar Winner John Barry, which, as always, boosts this simple film and gives it the emotion it deserves.

This movie is a simple, rainy afternoon, mystery/suspense drama. Its well made, the locations are exotic and the photography and the music well done.

Once you find out the twist at the end, you may not watch it again...however you just might join the ranks of those who still like it no matter how many times they watch.