ABSOLUTE DECEPTION is another B-movie thriller from director Brian Trenchard-Smith, a man responsible for some great and some not-so-great films over the years. This is one of his better movies, a fast-paced story of corruption and murder and the crusading efforts of a couple of small fry to bring down the big bad guys.The film is set in Australia, of course, and features a gorgeous lead actress in the form of Emmanuelle Vaugier, who also delivers a pretty good performance to boot. Cuba Gooding Jr. hangs around the scenes too but has a very limited character although he handles himself well in the action stakes. Speaking of action, there's plenty of it here and it has a decent Bourne-style hard edge mixed with some of the old-fashioned stunts that Trenchard-Smith has always enjoyed inserting into his movies. Although the story is nothing special the bright and colourful cinematography makes this a fine-looking thriller and a film I enjoyed throughout.

Review: This is a terrible "made for TV" type movie with bad acting and a boring storyline. I lost interest earlier on in the movie because it was obvious what was going on. The director tried to add some wit to this thriller, which really didn't work, and the lady who played the leading role wasn't really that convincing as an investigator. I wasn't expecting that much from the film, so I wasn't overly disappointed, but the director could have at least tried to make a watchable film. The whole thing seemed cheap without that much thought so I would leave this one off of your rental list. Terrible!Round-Up: This must have been a simple pay day for Cuba Gooding Jr. I can't see him reading the script, thinking that it was that amazing, and you can tell by his acting that he didn't put his all into it so I will just out this down to another bad choice. The lady who plays the lead (Emmanuele Vaugier), who has starred in movies like Saw II and 40 Days & 40 Nights, wasn't that amazing in this film. She just became annoying after a while which made the movie more difficult to watch. I recommend this movie to people who like there cheap thrillers about a woman trying to find out what happened to her dead husband. 1/10

This movie starred a couple of pretty faces that knew nothing about playing simple make-believe (acting). The acting was so bad that one could have transported the actors on the stage of SNL and you would have thought they were performing a parody. They exaggerated the seriousness of their characters to the point that they could have been with Leslie Nielson on board the movie "Airplane". Cuba acted on the script that was given to him, and it left him looking like an amateur. This was so bad on so many levels. I guess they had to push it in the market places (trusting enough people would watch it) to pay off the cost of making it. The director should have directed himself right out of doing any more movies, and the actresses...well don't quit your day job.

In this film, set mostly in Gold Coast, Australia, the plot contrivances became way too much for my tastes. The scenery in this resort area of Australia is eye-catching and the filmmakers made sure there were a number of voluptuous looking women on screen, but the script seemed cobbled together from elements that we've all seen before.Cuba Gooding Jr., who has been doing a number of these Grade B films recently, stars as FBI Agent John Nelson who is trying to bring down a billionaire Australian Ponzi schemer named Ronald Osterberg (Chris Betts). However, his chief informant Dennis Archer is killed just before he's to meet with Agent Nelson.Emmanuelle Vaugier co-stars as Rebecca Scott, an intrepid investigative reporter for Spyglass magazine, in New York City. She thought her husband Miles Scott ((Ty Hungerford) was killed in an auto accident two years before. However, Agent Nelson has flown to NYC to inform her her husband not only faked his death but fled to Australia. In that country he went under the name Dennis Archer, re-married and began working for Osterberg. Agent Nelson, of course, also told Rebecca that he saw her husband get shot and killed.Rebecca is shocked by this news, but being an investigative reporter, she travels to Australia, against the advice of Agent Nelson, to try and uncover the whole story. There's a lot of conflicts that will occur between Rebecca, Agent Nelson, and the Australian federal Police Inspector Hendricks (Evert McQueen). There's also more murder and mayhem to follow.I thought the repartee between Rebecca and Agent Nelson only partially worked, as perhaps a good part of it was even ad-libbed. Additionally, the hinting of a possible relationship between the two seemed far fetched to me.The supposed "big surprise" at the end I didn't think was that much of a surprise and could have been reasonably figured out early on in the movie. All in all, the plot coincidences and contrivances were too much.4 stars out of 10