Skunkyrate Gripping story with well-crafted characters

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Stephan Hammond It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

robert-temple-1 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.

01_gblack -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.

gradyharp 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

bakossi 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.