'Hoax' gets look, but not the heart, of the Hughes con

• Published in: McClatchy - Tribune Business News p. 1
• Main Author: Wilmington, Michael
• Format: Newsletter
• Language: English
• Published: Washington Tribune Content Agency LLC 06.04.2007
• Subjects: Autobiographies; Gere, Richard; Hallstrom, Lasse; Harden, Marcia Gay; Hoaxes; Irving, Clifford; Molina, Alfred; Motion pictures; Watergate affair; Writers

[Hughes] was one of the most powerful (and craziest) men on the planet, so influential that, this movie speculates, Richard Nixon stumbled into Watergate out of fear of him. Yet Irving, armed mostly with chutzpah and a quick tongue, bet the house on Hughes keeping mum. Apparently the con artist -- whose best known book heretofore had been "Fake!", a portrait of art forger Elmyr de Hory -- thought he and his more timid confederate, Richard Suskind (Alfred Molina), could really get away with faking the book and pocketing the check, cashed by Irving's wife, [Edith Irving] (Marcia Gay Harden). In fact, they almost did, duping experts right and left up to the end. Best of all are [Richard Gere] and Molina as a classic slickster and stooge, a Martin and Lewis of literary bushwa. Gere's charm gets double-edged in this kind of part; as in "American Gigolo," he radiates casual menace or reckless unconcern. And Gere deftly conveys how Irving, when challenged or trapped, keeps upping the ante, trying to bluff his way out. His verbal cunning and fox-like smile make it work. Molina, on the other hand, plays Suskind as a gifted weakling infatuated with Irving's raw nerve and panache, who goes along, too long, for the ride. It's a perfect schnook role, played impeccably.