Unmoored charm used to be Richard Gere's calling card. Skating over the razor's edge between seductiveness and smarm was his specialty as a performer even before he really mastered it as an actor and rooted it in a character's needs and impulses. Now that he's become a formidable leading man, that knack is just one tool in his kit.
He's never shown truer colors or a wider spectrum than as that notorious faker Clifford Irving in The Hoax. And for Irving he forges a quality all his own: a serpentine virility. This swift, insightful black frolic tells how, in 1971, Irving, a novelist and nonfiction writer with delusions of literary grandeur, sold his publisher, McGraw-Hill, on the idea that Howard Hughes had authorized this man of letters to interview the mysterious, omnipotent tycoon and compile a Q&A; autobiography.
The Hoax (Miramax) Starring Richard Gere, Alfred Molina, Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, Julie Delpy, Stanley Tucci, Eli Wallach. Directed by Lasse Hallstrom. Rated R. Time 116 minutes.