Deceiver

Monday, May 11, 2009 6:29 | Filled in 1. MOVIES - OVERVIEW

Cast: Chris Penn, Ellen Burstyn, Tim Roth, Renée Zellweger, Michael Rooker and Rosanna Arquette

Directors: Jonas Pate and Josh Pate

Writers: Jonas Pate and Josh Pate

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The film Deceiver, which was named Liar in UK release, is a murder mystery film written and directed by the twinbrothers Pate. The film won Best Cinematography and Best Screenplay at the 1997 Stockholm Film Festival, and the Special Jury Prize at the 1998 Cognac Police Film Festival.

Renée Zellweger plays a prostitute named Elizabeth, who is found dead and cut in two peaces in a local park.

Walter Wayland (Tim Roth), is an inheritor of a textile company who is suspected of the murder.

Walter is highly intelligent, but a heavy drinker and suffers from a serious temporal lobe epilepsy and a memory loss. And due to his memory loss, he doesn’t remember the details of his encounter with Elizabeth.

The two detectives, Edward Kennesaw (Michael Rooker ) and Phillip Braxton (Chris Penn) who are investigating the case, are not buing Walter’s story of his memory loss and he becomes their number one suspect.

But Walter is wealthy, manipulative and arrogant, and his wealth and good connections give him access to all kinds of information about the investigators. An information, Walter uses to turn the questions against the investigators themselfes. Which means that at the same time the detectives have to struggle with their own gremlins, they must find out whether Walter is a lying psychopath murderer or just a spoiled swellhead…