"This is the edited edition of Ruby Cairo, which was released in the U.S. Andy McDowell objected to the nudity in the original. "Deceptions" is the edited version. Ruby Cairo is only available overseas.
I give it 2 stars because it is not the original."
Repeat: this is NOT Ruby Cairo!
Jean Bond | Seattle | 09/11/2005
(1 out of 5 stars)
""Deception" is the edited version of "Ruby Cairo," which is not a great movie but which is better than this one. It isn't just the sex scene that was edited out, but a total of about 20 minutes. The movie makes more sense in the RC version, and the sex scene, though dark and in Andie's case a bit airbrushed, is worth seeing, especially if you are a Viggo Mortensen fan. I don't think it was the nudity Andie objected to, though, or not entirely. The scene ends in an act of contempt that would sting any woman. It effectively lets you know what the man's character is really thinking, but it's brutal in a subtle way. There is also, of course, the (apparent) age difference between the two characters. He looks about 10 years younger than she does, even with a beard."
A good rainy afternoon, suspense drama that is worthy of pra
S. J. Culbertson | Ikoma-City, Nara, Japan | 05/17/2006
(4 out of 5 stars)
"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."
Deceptive
E. A Solinas | MD USA | 01/05/2000
(2 out of 5 stars)
"Some movies don't make sense.
Exhibit A: "Deception," a thriller full of money, deception and baseball cards, which started off on a promising note, but rapidly became too absurd to really deal with. The only saving grace is Liam Neeson, but even his charm cannot keep "Deception" honest.
Young mother Bessie Faro (Andie MacDowell) is shattered when she learns that her husband Johnny (Viggo Mortensen) was in a fatal plane crash. Even worse, their joint plane company is about bankrupt. But when she goes to Mexico to identify the body, she finds that her husband has been making massive deposits in banks all over the world. The key to finding them: Johnny's baseball cards.
At first, Bessie is overjoyed at picking up the vast sums of money, since she can easily support herself and her young children with it for many years. But then she learns that the accounts are being closed -- is her husband still alive? The search brings her on a parallel path to a kindly humanitarian, Dr. Lamb (Liam Neeson).... and to the ugly truth about where her husband got all that money.
Buried inside "Deception" is a pair of movies. Not one, but two. One is about a rather dim housewife discovering her husband's Big Secret. The other is about gunrunners, embezzlement and murder. Unfortunately, this movie is mashed together into a logic-free, tedious mess.
Despite the international travels, there isn't much scenery in this movie, except some dusty streets and one pretty shot of Lamb and Bessie smooching atop the pyramid (are people allowed to climb those anymore?). Even more time is devoted to the baseball card trick, which seems too weird to be possible, and then to the even more improbable gunrunning scenario.
Mortensen does a passable job as Johnny Faro, but he's frankly in too little of the movie to really register. And what little time he has is spent in sneering and leering. MacDowell is passable at best, embarrassing at worst (crying into the freezer?). She's completely outshone by Neeson, who lends surprisingly pathos and warmth as a humanitarian who finds out his charity is funded by gunrunners.
The only redeeming factor is Neeson. Aside from him, "Deception" is doomed to fail by a pair of improbable plots, and a dimwitted housewife played by a famous model. Silly and overwrought."
Great Potential - but Poor Character Depth
Lisa Shea "WineIntro.com" | 06/11/2006
(3 out of 5 stars)
"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."