The Deceivers

The Deceivers is loaded with elements that suggest its worthiness as a movie property. It’s got scale, pageantry, action. There’s nothing here to prevent a rousing tale along the lines of Gunga Din.

As it turns out, however, there’s simply nothing here at all. The Deceivers is a perfunctory affair that doesn’t begin to tap the story’s possibilities. It’s based on a novel by John Masters, which fictionalizes a true story about a British diplomat (Pierce Brosnan) in India in 1825, who infiltrated the notorious (and murderous) Thuggee cult. The film contrasts his prim and proper existence, in which he marries his superior’s lovely blond daughter (Helena Michell), with his darker side, in which he joins the stranglers and begins to play his role with unexpected enthusiasm.

The split between his light side and his dark side is a rich theme, and the setting lends itself to high drama laced with the romance of the subcontinent. And we do get cobras, many­-armed goddesses and the self­-immolation of widows.

There are also juicy supporting turns from expert Indian actors Saeed Jaffrey (the loyal assistant in The Man Who Would Be King) and Shashi Kapoor (the popular Indian actor who recently starred in Sammy and Rosie Get Laid). But The Deceivers has a surprisingly flat, cheap look, as though the whole thing were produced on the fly.

Which is unexpected, as the producer is the class-A Ismail Merchant (A Room With a View) and the director is the usually reliable Nicholas Meyer (Star Trek II). Meyer can generally be counted on to bring the ingenuity of a precocious 12-year-old to his projects, and he obviously tries to bring some Gunga Din flavor to The Deceivers, with a few grabby moments (a corpse’s hand flopping out of a grave, a crazy fantasia as Brosnan makes love to an Indian girl).

But he’s swamped by the plodding pace, and the frumpy physical look. (It’s a bit shocking to think that any movie filmed entirely in India could be visually boring; but such is the­ case.) Also, Brosnan, who made a charming Remington Steele on TV, is skin-deep; he’s unconvincing as a man struggling with his soul. Brosnan was up for the James Bond role that Timothy Dalton won in The Living Daylights, and this film makes that decision look entirely appropriate.

First published in the Herald, September 1988

Has this film made any kind of impression on anybody? It’s kind of an outlier among Merchant Ivory films, and apparently Ismail Merchant wrote a book about the tangled production. In the odd directing career of Nicholas Meyer, this is a head-scratcher.