Choke

Sam Rockwell plays the role of Victor, a sex addict and an unrepentant conman in this rather mediocre adaptation of Palahniuk’s novel, which is much like the Fight Club and is showcased through a different sort of a psychological unease. Victor is so desperate for a continuous supply of females to do his dirty deeds that he even attends regular Addicts Anonymous classes with equally sex-starved women.

Chuck Palahniuk is the undisputed king of the kingdom of the clinically screwed up men. In his books he happily talks about various taboos like neuroses, dangerous fantasies and addictions. So after the cult and critical success of Palahniuk’s Fight Club, it took almost a decade to recreate the effect. However, Choke (the novel) is as different from Fight Club as it can be.

The movie is a complex, layered affair, part brooding part bubbly. It’s here that the director Clark Gregg, makes his first big mistake. He favours comedy over horror and turns a successfully brilliant novel into a half-baked unconvincing social satire. It’s just due to the stellar efforts of the actors and of course Sam Rockwell’s voiceover (fully utilising the droll monologues from the novel) that gives the movie whatever enduring quality that audiences might able to associate it with. However, the fact that the movie is riddled with numerous directorial weaknesses is too obvious to be overlooked. The script jumps from one sub-plot to another and as such comes across as desperate attempt on the part of the director to cram the entire novel into a movie.