The Deal (2005) User Reviews (19)

Awful and Very Confused Screenplay

[claudio_carvalho · 4/10 · 23 December 2005]

The storyline of "The Deal" has a good premise – the USA officially in war against the Arabs exclusively because of the oil and without any subterfuge. An American Oil Corporation requests the support of a credible Wall Street company to support a merging with a Russian Oil Company and get the supply of the necessary oil. An ambitious executive from Harvard is in charge of the deal and pressed by the Russians, the board of his company and his love for a colleague.

Unfortunately, the very confused screenplay is simply awful. It is almost impossible to understand the beginning of the story so confused it is. Later, the plot is disclosed and finally the viewer can understand the situation, with lots of betrayals and jealousy. There are three favorable reviews of this movie, and two of them are written by users with only one review issued in IMDb apparently to make a fake promotion of this film. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Contrato de Risco" ("Risk Contract")

political thriller ... quite routine and made without inspiration

[dromasca · 4/10 · 3 May 2006]

Director Harvey Kahn was completely deprived of any inspiration in bringing to screen this political thriller story, happening in the corridors of the big corporate companies dealing with dirty oil deals, in a close but probable future where the western world is immersed in a war with the Arab oil-rich countries.

Nothing can really save this production. The screenplay is routine and full of stereotypes, not batter in complexity than a mid-level TV movie. Acting of Christian Slater is fair, and Selma Blair getting full time screen is quite promising as an actress, but not enough to carry the film higher. Directing is mediocre, it keeps the conflict being obscure and confusing at the start, does not make anything happening on the screen more clear or more interesting later, and moves the camera in a neutral and dry manner.

Routine stuff, nobody would have been sorry if this film was not made.

"The Deal" is an entertaining, but flawed political thriller.

[tarbosh22000 · 6/10 · 12 May 2010]

"The Deal" is an entertaining, but flawed political thriller.

Christian Slater plays Tom, a man about to close a huge oil deal. But everything doesn't go as scheduled, because blackmail and murder go hand in hand on Wall Street. Christian Slater is very convincing in his role. Selma Blair looks bored. John Heard does nothing to advance the plot. Angie Harmon plays a Russian spy. Her accent is off the mark.

The movie tries to be different because the climax involves not gunfire (well, there's some) but talking. It doesn't really work. But overall, it's worth seeing for Slater's performance.

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Script Needs A lot More Work

[August1991 · 3/10 · 11 September 2005]

This movie's subject matter is timely and the movie even makes an attempt, in the end, to understand how various competing interests come together in a deal. To get there though, you'll have to wade through fake Russian accents, a fake Arab country and fake due diligence conversations. The deal of the movie concerns an oil bootlegger circumventing a US government embargo. There is drama in the oil-for-food scandal and maybe even a plot for a movie, but this movie is not it.

That is to say, the movie's primary flaw is that the script is only a draft and while the idea has potential, the script needed several more revisions. There are other problems too: actors didn't get sufficient direction and the editing is sporadic at times. I had no problem with the casting. Colm Feore and Robert Loggia turn in good performances.

Hollywood has a lot of difficulty making movies about business and the few that get made usually become morality plays about greed. This movie is not really an exception - but at least here, not all the corporate suits are bad guys. I watched The Deal to the end and can say I enjoyed it, if only because it tries to deal intelligently with issues most movies ignore.

"Intrigue Deal" over $6/gallon Gas - We're Already Over Halfway There

[gradyharp · 3/10 · 22 August 2005]

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

Uneven

[UACW · 15 November 2006]

It's rough to call something people worked on so hard for 'uneven' but there it is. The Deal is, simply put, about a 'deal'. It's a Wall Street thriller. And at the other end of the deal is oil. A planet in trouble where the carbon monoxide level is the highest it's been in three quarters of a million years, where 50,000,000 people are estimated to be on the run from climate catastrophes within four years, where the top twenty two median temperatures have been recorded in the past twenty six years, and so forth.

It's been done before and it will be done again until the dependence on fossil fuels is ended, until the electric car is allowed to proliferate, until the oil barons get their hands off the automobile industry, until things settle down in the middle east, and so forth.

Everyone does a fair job in this one except Angie. Sorry Angie, but for reasons that can't be exposed here but that will become apparent to viewers you just don't cut it.

The movie's uneven because its thrill factor is propelled through at least half way by withholding important facts about the plot. And at that point you just have to see everything turns out all right with the usual modicum of plot devices tossed in.

The Deal is that this movie sucked...

[tmutchell · 3/10 · 6 September 2005]

Slater stars in and co-executive produces this film, which means they got to use both his likeness and his money to try to help this film succeed, and it still flops. The movie is second-rate (or worse) in virtually every respect. With the exceptions of some of the names in the credits, this movie has almost no redeeming qualities, and of course the credits occur right at the beginning of the movie, so it's all down hill from there.

Loggia's a solid character actor, and Slater's decent playing the same character he always plays. Even though he's 36 now, he looks like he should be drinking a Shirley Temple during the bar scenes. Blair is a stone, and an anorexic-looking, awkward stone at that. She has no talent that I can detect, with a delivery that has all the depth and warmth of a petri dish. Think Keanu Reeves, only less attractive and with boobs. Very small boobs. She's also 32, not young enough to play the recent Harvard grad she's supposed to be. Angie Harmon is gorgeous, but unimpressive as an actor, and no one else in the movie gives any sort of memorable performance.

Blair's character's romance with Slater's is completely unbelievable, as there's no chemistry between them, so the audience is left thinking "What did I miss?" when the two of them suddenly start kissing for no apparent reason. Evidently the romantic music playing on the soundtrack while they sat in meetings with clients was supposed to demonstrate the build-up of their amorous feelings. It didn't.

The plot is the one thing this movie should have going for it, given the current state of gas prices and the war in Iraq, but it's such an obvious parallel and so close to home that it's too easy to dismiss, thereby undermining the entire premise of the film. Not that the poor writing, poor direction and poor acting do much to revive it, but this Deal should have died on the table.

Corporate Greed

[Uriah43 · 6/10 · 4 December 2012]

The United States is in an oil crunch. So, when the banking firm that "Tom Hanson" (Christian Slater) works for gets an opportunity to make a deal with an oil firm that might have the inside track on some foreign oil, the firm is only too happy to jump at the chance. But there are risks involved, and Tom doesn't know the oil business that well. Add insider politics, the Russian mafia, along with corporate greed, and you have the basics of this movie. As usual, Christian Slater performs quite well. So too, does Selma Blair as his environmentalist girlfriend, "Abbey Gallagher". Unfortunately, I didn't care too much for the performance of Angie Harmon as the mysterious "Anna" mostly because her Russian accent seemed too artificial. One minute she's speaking in perfect English, and the next her accent is off the charts. Likewise, I thought the ending was too quick and convenient. But in any case, I still enjoyed the movie, and believe it's worth a look for those who like films of this nature.

What did he do?

[bitter-4 · 2/10 · 22 June 2005]

Christian Slater in "The Deal". Good lord in heaven: what did Slater do in a former life to deserve this movie? He has made a lot of really bad choices lately ("Mindhunters", "Masked and Anonymous", "Alone in The Dark") but this is the kind of script even Oliver Platt would walk away from. A laughably bad script from first (and hopefully last) time screen writer, Ruth Epstein, who should have kept her job at Goldman Sachs. The pathetic premise of an oil conspiracy is about as thin as an Olsen Twin, and the dialog is twice as brittle; made doubly so by Angie Harmon when she tries to pull off a Russian accent (which, if I've done my math right, means the dialog has the octo-brittleness of a single Olsen, but I digress). Slater tries to crawl his way through a flimsy maze of corporate deceit, while woman after woman can't help but chew his tongue. Slema Blair is actually very good as his tree-hugging girlfriend who shows him the path to salvation, only the scene where she actually show him anything must have been deleted, 'cause I never saw it. Maybe they're saving it for the DVD. There is simply nothing thrilling about this thriller. They must have just figured if the stacked the cast with actors like Robert Loggia and John Heard they could ad-lib their way around the awkward exposition. Director Harvey Kahn, who has produced an impressive body of work but directed nothing of note, must have compromising photos of the cast. Ultimately, Slater is totally miss-cast as a Wall Street hack. They should have gone with an unknown and then maybe they could have gotten away with the low budget production values and pass 'The Deal' off as a student film. You have been warned.

Horribly conceived, inexplicably not aborted

[christonacrutch · 1/10 · 23 March 2006]

This movie was like a forced sitting through a Vogon poetry reading....except much, much worse. Don't believe the flowery reviews, that one can only expect, are coming from those less than objective. This movie attempts to tie in the conspiracy plots involving Big Oil a la Syriana with the big Government cover-up of Lord of War with all the talent of an English undergrad the night after a kegger at Phi Beta Kapa.

It boggles the mind how Hollywood execs continue to complain about decreasing box office sales and rising movie piracy rates when they keep trying to present garbage like The Deal for public consumption.

Important film, richly complex yet entertaining

[bakossi · 10/10 · 18 June 2005]

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.

Much Worse Than "Awful"!!!

[davemed · 1/10 · 17 October 2005]

I was afraid that it was going to be bad when the "maguffin" as Hitchcock called it was tacitly revealed as an oil company executive was having a conscience attack over something...and it was not a science fiction film! I couldn't say for sure if the problem was the lack of a real story or the misdirection of an outstanding cast, but this movie is slow, muddled and doesn't deliver at the end of the film. Christian Slater and Selm Blair are two of my favorites and it really is painful to watch them trying to give this doa project a bit of life. When I say that this is "Much Worse Than Awful", I mean it! Talent and budget can't go anywhere without a real story. Stay away from this one.

Could have been a good story, but was mostly awful

[bobbobwhite · 3/10 · 14 June 2011]

Poorly done TV-grade story about two very important global issues, one manipulated by Wall Street scoundrels for criminal gain(really?), and the other was nearly overlooked in this rambling and disjointed story that was lowered to moronic and absurd due to poor storytelling and editing, and some really terrible acting by Angie Harmon. Selma Blair was not much better, but Harmon was over the top obvious as a Russian mafia operative, and made her part a leering, grinning joke in a story that should hinge on personal control, secrecy, duplicity and treachery. In her role as the main squeeze of Christian Slater's Wall Street mover and shaker, Blair was allowed facial expressions and body language of a high school freshman girl in a role of a grown woman. Nobody noticed that a bit more shown maturity might be better for her professional role, on Wall Street? Hello! The interesting and compelling part of this type of story should be its devious mystery, secrecy and who-done-it quality, and not in exposing every aspect of "the deal" to the viewer as it unfolded. What a totally dumb film made for dummies and an insult to the talented male lead Christian Slater, who made a big mistake taking a role in this TV level junk. He did well, but was overwhelmed by others' poor acting, and bad casting and overall filmmaking. Only thing good about it was the really ominous and sinister soundtrack. Very effective, so something actually was done right.

But, showing again a lack of creativity, the film's title "The Deal" has been used as a film title about a million times before, thus is another perfect example of this filmmaker's total lack of knowing and using just about anything that would make a good movie. A lot of money was lost on this dog that cost way more than it made. And, if he didn't gain any satisfaction from it, and I am sure he didn't in this loser, at least Slater got paid for his good work. He was the only one who deserved it.

No deal!

[jotix100 · 5/10 · 23 November 2009]

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.

Basic Thriller with Poor Dialog

[born-giantsfan · 4/10 · 22 October 2012]

It's a basic thriller with an OK plot, OK (at best) acting, and sometimes silly dialog.

Stereotypical characters:

• business people that want the deal done at all costs

• government official that don't care about the cost of getting oil

• Russian mobsters with bad accents and stupid actions

Poor acting:

• bad Russian accents

• stilted dialog and conversations

• no emotional attachment to any of the characters

• Christian Slater and Selma Blair have a few moments of decent acting, but even much of theirs is poor. Two scenes in particular standout - the scene where he pushes her away (breaks up with her) and the closing scene of the movie. Both bad.

Plot and Dialog:

• see the above mentioned scenes

• read the "quotes" section here on IMDb - you get a good sense of the silliness of some of the dialog

• plot is thin and the ending is anti-climactic

hmmm, maybe a 4 rating is being generous.

Excellent thriller, enlightening, too

[tomdb2 · 10/10 · 19 June 2005]

Saw this film last night in Chicago, and more should see it before it disappears from the theaters (not many people there last night--looks like there's been no pub for the film). Anyway, it's a real insider's perspective on our energy situation and the really nasty scenarios we're headed into if we don't get our act together. But it's not a sermon--it's quite entertaining. Both Christian Slater and Selma Blair (a revelation) are great in it as a principal and an idealistic associate at a white-shoes Wall Street mergers & acquisition firm who are supposed to do due diligence on a merger between a major US oil company and a Russian one against the backdrop of an all-out Middle East oil war and $6.00/hour gas prices. Robert Loggia is perfect as the CEO of the US firm, Kevin Tighe is very convincing as the head of the white-shoes M&A firm, and Colm Feore is terrific as the proverbial corporate snake-in-the-grass out to sabotage Slater's deal.

Great movie portraying the corrupt oil industry.

[01_gblack · 10/10 · 2 October 2005]

-edit- davemed says "Stay away from this one." As mentioned below for all those interested in the truth of how the world works this is a great movie. For those who prefer to deny it and stick their heads in the sand like a south park character "stay away from this one...".

*It is interesting to see how IMDb has many members exist now who bring down a film with important information for the growth of ourselves and our planet. They do it with interesting techniques too. If you study their grammar you often find an arrogant tone and adjectives such as "muddled" or "slow" which can leave the reader feeling negative in a very effective way. The telling symptom displayed by these people which proves their ill-minded intentions in my opinion, is the opposite of what they are saying is true. This is pure shilling and these people are writing this stuff for a particular reason - they don't want people to watch movies that provide information about the truth.

After reading the negative comments on this movie I was apprehensive to see it. While there are some valid points per say with regards to the direction of the movie, the script and actors do very well. The result is a movie that does a very good job at raising the awareness of the ins and outs of big business, wall street, corruption and the energy industry.

Christian Slater and Salma Hayek and the other actors all do a good job to portray their characters. The environment-caring industry is also revealed in an effective way; showing how it has to compete with ignorance and greed. Also showing how this ignorance and greed is paid off with extremely lucrative sums of money; quoting from the movie, "...so this is how the other 0.5% live".

An entertaining movie that is worth watching for anyone who enjoys learning about the truths of big business and how it attempts to control the energy industry.

A good political thriller

[PersianPlaya408 · 8/10 · 13 September 2006]

This political thriller about illegal oil trading, the Russian mafia, and government conspiracy is well done, and deserves a much better rating and credit than people give it. It is not amazing by any means, but its solidy acted, written well, reaches some very important moral and political ideas without being completely illogical and unrealistic (of course its not real, but it very well could be). Slater was good as tom hanson and i liked Robert Loggia in the supporting role as Jared TOlson, the film has good cinematography from Adam Sliwinski and editing by Richard Schwadel. Overall good effort from harvey Kahn, better than a lot of high budget films, amazing how this film probably cost a couple million to make max (perhaps 5-10 mil after slater gets his cash)...--- IMDb rating: 5.1, my rating: 8/10

Intelligent, challenging, and highly topical corporate thriller

[robert-temple-1 · 9/10 · 28 September 2008]

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.