From the very first frame, Choke stakes its claim as the most provocative, stomach-churning film of the year — an attitude that does not cease for a second of this thoroughly seedy (but nonetheless fantastic) movie based on the Chuck Palahniuk novel of the same name.
Choke stars Sam Rockwell as Victor Mancini, a protagonist who could best be described as a waste of life. A sex-addict who will screw anything and everything female that moves — usually in dirty bathrooms and other sketchy locations — Rockwell’s character comes off as a ‘70s porn star born two decades too late.
Victor works as a “historical interpreter” (aka tour guide) at a colonial-era amusement park — though he supplements his income by intentionally choking himself at restaurants and hitting up his saviors for money. Victor has found that when someone saves your life, they feel an inherent, lifelong responsibility to the victim. He then keeps an ever-expanding mailing list of his saviors and feeds them sob stories to exploit their generosity.
But Victor may not be entirely selfish. He uses the money he “earns” from his choking to pay for an expensive mental health facility for his mother (played brilliantly by Anjelica Huston) who suffers from dementia. As her condition worsens she reveals to her son that she has been lying to him about the identity of his father; Victor consequently becomes obsessed with extracting this information from his mom before she dies.
Victor’s complicated relationship with his mother is one of the central themes of the film. He spends a lot of time visiting her even though she doesn’t recognize him, and we learn that he dropped out of medical school to pay for her to live in a nicer facility. Yet he claims that he doesn’t do it out of love, and the viewer is not entirely convinced otherwise. Victor never had a normal childhood because of his mother’s lifelong mental problems and drug use, and his bitterness is quite apparent.
But the film’s true beauty is its ability to present a thoroughly despicable and flawed character that, though he grows throughout the story, never really becomes a good person — yet you like him anyway. Victor is offensive, sex-crazed and just an all-around crappy person; but the movie doesn’t try to change him as much as it tries to understand him. He learns to truly care about a woman, which is a huge step, but at the end of the day he is still the same man who has had sex with every female employee of his mother’s mental health facility.
Obviously Victor’s sex addiction makes for a lot of outrageous scenes throughout the movie — I wouldn’t recommend this for a first date unless you are comfortable watching people have sex in an airplane bathroom while you are sitting next to someone you don’t really know.
That being said, it is often the movie’s seediest moments that feel the most real. Victor has an in-depth conversation about relationships while getting a hand-job from a milkmaid and he realizes his ability to love when he can’t get it up while trying to have sex in a church. Even though he is performing these ridiculous acts, he is learning about himself while he’s doing it.
While Choke is definitely not for every kind of movie-goer, I could not give this film enough rave: At 89 minutes I only wish it could have gone on longer. If you are a fan of Fight Club or any other Chuck Palahniuk work, this movie is a must-see.
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