Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Leofwine_draca ABSOLUTE DECEPTION is another B-movie thriller from director Brian Trenchard-Smith, a man responsible for some great and some not-so-great films over the years. This is one of his better movies, a fast-paced story of corruption and murder and the crusading efforts of a couple of small fry to bring down the big bad guys.The film is set in Australia, of course, and features a gorgeous lead actress in the form of Emmanuelle Vaugier, who also delivers a pretty good performance to boot. Cuba Gooding Jr. hangs around the scenes too but has a very limited character although he handles himself well in the action stakes. Speaking of action, there's plenty of it here and it has a decent Bourne-style hard edge mixed with some of the old-fashioned stunts that Trenchard-Smith has always enjoyed inserting into his movies. Although the story is nothing special the bright and colourful cinematography makes this a fine-looking thriller and a film I enjoyed throughout.

blanche-2 The Gold Coast in Australia looks positively gorgeous in "Absolute Deception," a film from 2013 which stars Cuba Gooding, Jr., Emmanuelle Vaugier, Ty Hungerford, and Evert McQueen.The plot is derivative, about a reporter, Rebecca Scott (Vaugier) who finds out that her dead husband, supposedly killed in a car accident two years earlier, has actually just died in Australia, living under the name Miles Archer, and married to someone else. He was about to be put into the Witness Protection Program. An accountant, he had his hand in the billion-dollar cookie jar of his new boss, a Bernie Madoff type named Osterberg. In order to avoid being killed, he was turning evidence over to the FBI. But Nelson doesn't get to him in time and sees him killed. So he's dead again.Rebecca heads for Australia to find out what happened. There she runs into Nelson, Osterberg, and an obstinate Police Inspector Hendricks. Basically they would all be happy if she would just go home.The acting is awful. Emmanuelle Vaugier is beautiful, but there is no chemistry at all between her and Gooding. Gooding does okay, but I have a feeling he just phoned it in. She definitely did. I noticed posts about her eyebrows. If you're watching a film and noticing someone's eyebrows, how into it can you be? There's a twist at the end but by then I'm afraid not many people cared. Very by the numbers, slow in spots, badly acted, and boring. But as I said, nice scenery.

Jonathon Natsis Aussie director Brian Trenchard-Smith's reputation for squeezing every penny while delivering action mixed with a somewhat warped sense of humour is on scant display in his latest project, Absolute Deception. Queensland's sun-drenched Gold Coast is the perfect backdrop for a high- stakes game of cat and mouse, and the film makes for a mostly tolerable experience, but lacks any point of difference amidst the stunted landscape of action-thrillers.Cuba Gooding Jr. plays a no-nonsense FBI agent who witnesses the murder of Miles, a man about to placed in witness protection. In giving the bad news to the victim's wife (the stunning Emmanuelle Vaugier), we learn that Miles faked his death two years prior, setting up a web of lies that seem to tie in with Miles' shady second wife and Murdoch-esque media mogul Mr. Osterberg.Gooding and Vaugier display solid chemistry as the reluctant tag team, and their snappy interplay forms the highlight of the film. Unfortunately, outside of these fleeting moments of creativity, there is little else to stimulate the senses script-wise. Even more surprisingly, it is actually Vaugier, as the nosy and fearless reporter Rebecca Scott, who drives most of the plot. Meanwhile, Gooding feels more like a bit player despite his top billing, leaving much to be desired considering he is infinitely the more interesting character.Although highly revered by a man who built an empire on cinematic thrills in Quentin Tarantino, Trenchard-Smith fails to impose his will on the film's direction. This isn't without giving it a decent shake-up in the process, but every time Absolute Deception looks primed for a step into the big leagues it grounds out in a blaze of unfettered predictability; a matinée shell of something that could've been a ton of fun. *There's nothing I love more than a bit of feedback, good or bad. So drop me a line on jnatsis@iprimus.com.au and let me know what you thought of my review. If you're looking for a writer for your movie website or other publication, I'd also love to hear from you.*

tim-anderson94 This movie starred a couple of pretty faces that knew nothing about playing simple make-believe (acting). The acting was so bad that one could have transported the actors on the stage of SNL and you would have thought they were performing a parody. They exaggerated the seriousness of their characters to the point that they could have been with Leslie Nielson on board the movie "Airplane". Cuba acted on the script that was given to him, and it left him looking like an amateur. This was so bad on so many levels. I guess they had to push it in the market places (trusting enough people would watch it) to pay off the cost of making it. The director should have directed himself right out of doing any more movies, and the actresses...well don't quit your day job.