jotix100 The worlds of investing banking and Wall Street come together in this tale of high finances, and acquisitions of an important source of oil, that, might, or might not, be the real thing. When more pressure is put in being able to get cheap oil and make enormous amounts of money because of the high market prices, makes the right ingredients for all kinds of conspiracies theories.Tom Hanson, a man working for a financial institution is called to give his verdict on what an 'oily' old executive, Jared Tolson, wants to do in order to merge with a private Russian concern that controls reserves that hold a lot of promise. We realize from the start the deal needs to be investigated because it sounds too good. Someone is going to make a killing, for sure! The intrigue surrounding the prospective deal is confusing, at best. The unsuspecting viewer is assaulted with a lot of financial terms that will probably go above his head. The screenplay by Ruth Epstein is too heavy with twists and turns that add to addle anyone. In a way, we couldn't help thinking about the Enron debacle, as we watched this film, directed by Harvey Kahn.Christian Slater plays Tom Hanson, the expert that is the key figure in the deal that is being put together. Selma Blair is the smart young woman that Tom hires to delve into the background of the possible merge. Robert Loggia, never having looked as sly and fierce, is Jared Tolson. An excellent Colm Feore is about the best thing in the film.The higher places of finance in Boston, Vancouver and New York are photographed in glossy detail by Adam Sliwinski. Christopher Lennertz is the man responsible for providing the interesting music score.

robert-temple-1 There she is, Selma Blair! Dontcha just love her? She has what people who don't have it call 'class'. Maybe she was a preppie once. Well, she is good for a thinkie white collar role, as she looks like she has some brains and when she is looking like she is thinking she probably is, and that's pretty unusual with starlets. I guess she and Stockard Channing could make a good mother and daughter pair one of these days, a study of the Boston Brahmins perhaps. Now there's a subject for Harvey Kahn to get his eager little teeth into. And he really delivers as director here, with this extraordinarily complex and interesting thriller set slightly in the future. It is a meditation on corporate greed, oil smuggling, international tension, Arab states, house-of-cards companies which are about to collapse, rather like the real world at the moment. It is more relevant now than it was when it was made. Christian Slater is the male lead, and he has come a long way since 'The Name of the Rose' (1986) when he was a naive little novice monk with big innocent eyes. In fact, Slater is now a bit of a rough customer, or rough diamond, or whatever kind of rough you like. But rough, really rough. I don't see his attraction at all. He looks like he is always scheming on how to rob his grandmother of a nickel. Robert Loggia is wonderfully menacing and convincing as a big-time corporate manipulator who kills people when they interfere with his illicit profits. So watch out! He may do that at home! This is a most ingenious and intricate story, just like what really goes on in Wall Street, as we all now know. If you want to know why we have had to bail out all those investment banks, watch this.

gradyharp THE DEAL was made when the idea of paying $6 per gallon of gas would spark international intrigue: now that we're well over $3.35 per gallon that price seems less than shocking! The concept of showing how big business and the government cover up the absurd under the table Deals such as the one that is the focus of this meager script is now so de rigueur that there is no melodrama or intrigue to this story. One must credit writer Ruth Epstein, director Harvey Kahn, and executive producer/star Christian Slater for caring enough about the chaos oil supplies and their impact on the world at large are causing, but the sad truth is that this tale is so ho-hum in that we all read this very story in the newspaper everyday that it hardly seems to merit a movie.The cast is sterling - Christian Slater as a Wall Street type, Robert Loggia as the dirty hands dealer type, Selma Blair as the idealist, and Colm Feore, John Heard, Kevin Tighe, etc all try their best to make this flabby script meaningful. The star of the movie is the musical scoring by Christopher Lennertz...and that says a lot. Without an arc of plot line and without a bit of new information about the corruption at the highest levels of this country, this film just doesn't get off the ground. Grady Harp

bakossi I saw The Deal last night in Chicago. It's a dense film, with a lot of oil industry insider stuff, but very entertaining, and a really important film for people to see, given the path we're headed down in our country. Thought Selma Blair was terrific--best I've ever seen her. Robert Loggia, Colm Feore (my first time seeing him) great, too. Could have done without Angie Harmon, and would have liked the ending to extend out a bit further. I'd also have liked for there to be more intrusion of the reality of the $6/gallon world at war (which is the backdrop of the film) into the story--think that would have added even more punch--but none of that will knock a star off my rating, given the crap I've seen this summer so far--it's actually a 20 star by comparison. I guess I should say something about some of the negative critical reviews of the film. All I can conclude is that these folks are either lazy or overworked. In my experience, a lot of them have highly recommended films recently that are just garbage compared to The Deal. I guess the justification is supposed to be that these other films are "good escapes," but you know what? People already spend too much time in this country "escaping" instead of paying attention, and that's why we're in the mess that we're in. The Deal makes it fun to pay attention.