Book review: Deception Point by Dan Brown

Oh God, another Dan Brown novel is inflicted on the World.  Will this mans evil never stop?  Deception Point tells the story of a meteorite containing fossilized remains of an alien animal that is found in a glacier.  Except, it's all a fraud and there's someone behind this deception ... point.

This is the audio book cover. Sorry about that.

First of all, I can quite comfortably tell you that the meteorite is not really a meteorite and that the 'alien' fossil is not really an alien without spoiling anything as it's ON THE BACK COVER OF THE BOOK.  Yes, that's right, the main premise behind this 'book' by 'author' Dan Brown is revealed before you've even read the first page.  That doesn't stop him going half way through the story before revealing this 'secret' - 250 pages of a 500-page novel.  I really don't get this decision by the publisher to reveal most of the story in a paragraph summary, especially when half of the book is concerned with discovering the damn thing in the first place.

For what it's worth, I quite enjoyed the bit up to when the 'fraud' was discovered, even though I knew it was all phoney (because I'd read the back cover) and in the back of my mind I was constantly thinking, I wish he'd get to the point.  Oh, I see what he did there - the deception point!  Ha ha ha.  Anyway, Brown's faux-scientific 'evidence' and 'facts' were quite interesting and thought-provoking without asking anything too demanding.  After that however, it resorts to ridiculous hocus pocusery  as a crack elite team of special force army types are assigned to kill just about everyone in sight who had realized the meteorite wasn't strictly a meteorite.  I mean, come on, black helicopter rocket attacks a mile away from the White House?  Really?

Maybe they just think it's a cool colour scheme?

It's a shame as the premise is really quite good.  A meteorite discovery with evidence of interstellar life is a great idea for a book.  The implications for mankind are massive and all sorts of metaphysical, spiritual and existentialist questions could have been asked.  In stark polar opposite to the direction taken by the great Carl Sagan in his novel 'Contact', Brown eschews all that nonsense in favour of a dire, chase-em-up and political shenanigan thriller.  The end was never in any doubt (I can't point this out enough - it was on the freaking back cover) and so everything leading up to that point was just futile filler.  He could have easily written this book in two or three sentences.

And another thing, why does Dan Brown insist on putting that little paragraph at the beginning of his books that states, 'all the technology exists and everything I describe herein is entirely real'?  There really is no need.  His Da Vinci novels suffered because of that little bit of bollocks (not JUST that, let's make it clear) as the source material for his 'facts' was actually based on a frigging hoax in the first place.  If he'd made this stuff up, everyone would say, 'Ooh, I like Dan Brown, his imagination is great'.  As it is, everyone *actually* says, 'I hate Dan Brown, he presents all this bollocks as real when acutally it's just a load of badger crap'.  There are frickin' ice guns in this novel.  ICE GUNS.  Guns that fire ice and use snow as ammunition, you know, ICE GUNS.  Knob off Dan Brown you moron.  It goes downhill from there.

Wonder if this is what he meant?

Maybe ice guns do exist, I don't know.  But, if they do, and this elite special squad has them, there is a massive trail of accountability leading all the way back to the perpetrator of these serial killings and as such, they couldn't get away with what they did.  I don't care who it is, they would have got caught, simple as.  The point I'm making is that the crimes are so outlandish and therefore too unbelievable in the face of his self-proclaimed 'everything is true' mantra.  Michael Crichton for example takes current technology then extends it just a little bit, asking the reader to make a small leap of faith into his imagination.  So, while we are never left in any doubt as to its authenticity, his books are no less enjoyable.  It's fiction, after all.  Dan Brown doesn't do that.  He says 'ALL of this is true, accurate and has an absolute base-line in fact' then crafts a stupid-ass story around it in those small, cliff-hanging episodelets of his.  It's horseshit.

To sum up, half of the book you already knew the outcome to as it is described in the synopsis.  The second half of the book is a lame-ass thriller with people running away from / being boffed by elite Government killer troops and the whole alien / meteorite thing, the actual interesting meat of the story, is largely ignored in favour of black helicopters, killer sharks, coincidental submarines and bonking politicians.  Yawn.

Rating: 1 out of 5 for the first half (I'd have given it a 3 if the end result hadn't been given out beforehand) and -17 out of 5 for the god-awful second half, giving it a (not so) respectable -16 out of 10.  Please stop writing books Mr Brown, you're putting the evolution of the human brain into minus figures.  Before long, we'll all be dribbling amoebic cells (well, more so than we already are).

The Apology That Could Have Been

Moved here: http://thegreenwafer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-apology-that-could-have-been.html

Papas Other World : Movie review : Hide and Seek (2005)

Robert De Niro is something of an enigma.  Once the purveyor of incredible performances such as Jake La Motta, Travis Bickle, a young Don Corleone, he's now resorting to pay-check movies and with few exceptions, he's a shadow of his former self.  Meet The Parents is probably the only movie of late where he's done the business but even then, he's just playing Robert De Niro by another name.

Which brings us to Hide and Seek.

Agent: Hey, Bobby Dee, it's your agent Sid here, how you doing?

RDN: What you got for me Sid? I'm dying on my derriere here.

Agent: I've got this script ...

RDN: I'll take it, I need a new conservatory and a stone-built barbecue pit I've got my eye on.

Agent: But Bob, you don't know what it ...

RDN: Sid, did you not hear me?  I said, barbecue pit ...

Agent: Fine.  I'll ask for the usual 20 million then ...

RDN: Good boy.

Etc.

Hide and Seek tells the tale of a normal, happily married couple whose wife then boffs herself in the bath.  At the shock and horror of it all, Robert De Niro's psychologist character takes leave of his senses and decides to haul himself and eleven year old daughter off into the country to inhabit a mysterious house in the middle of nowhere.  Daughter then starts up a conversation with an imaginary friend who is a lot less friendly than it first appears.  Cue lots of spooky hi-jinks as adults do stupid things, Dakota Fanning looks weird and viewers try to rouse themselves from a boredom-induced coma.

There are even a couple of star-turns by an ever-green Elizabeth Shue, Famke Janssen implausibly playing a psychiatric colleague and that bloke from Disclosure playing a copper with a mysterious agenda.  Throw in some wild-eyed neighbours who lost their own kid and it all starts to add up to what could be a nice little chiller.

Of course, this being Hollywood and things like suspense, mystery or even horror aren't allowed to feature in any film where those attributes are deemed most suitable.  Being the whole crux of the story, the imaginary friend thing is played out with inevitable tedium.  Robert De Niro, an acclaimed psychologist loses all of his 'powers' and is unable to partake in even the most simplest of conversations with his daughter, something he is singularly supposed to be able to do because of his profession. He has to call a colleague for the most basic of advice.  What?  Are you kidding?  What happened to the forty years of training you've had?  You're a psychologist for goodness sake, go out there and .. psychologilize.  That's what you do, you moron.

The plot progresses and stuff starts happening because the imaginary friend 'Charlie' says it will. 'You don't want to get him mad' says Emily.  Right young madam, get off Facebook, put down the Blackberry and start going out to play in the fresh air.  There's a weird cave in the 6000 acre garden we've just bought?  Take a torch, a Mars Bar and a long ball of string.  You'll be alright ...

It's not all bad.  Dakota Fanning plays the part of Emily, the brat, I mean child in question, with great gusto.  She acts Robert De Niro off the screen which let's face it, nowadays even the nativity play at the local infants school could do.  The whole premise of the film *is* quite interesting.  Who or what is the imaginary friend that is making all this spooky stuff happen is, I must admit, the only thing that kept our interest and the director goes to great lengths to ensure the secret is not let out of the bag until the right moment.

Once that moment comes, about three quarters of the way through, the rest of the film is played out like some by-the-numbers crappy thriller starring some Z-list actors that you've never heard of.  Except this has got the great Bobby Niro in it and we're supposed to sit in amazed wonder at another fantastic performance by the King of Method.  I wonder what 'method' he chose for this?  Sitting in a potting shed for a month, talking to tomato plants?  He may as well have done.

I'm trying hard not to give any spoilers away as the twist is quite big.  What's with the weird neighbours and why is everyone obsessed with Emily?  I'm never ever moving to backwoods US of A as they're all freaks, every single last one of them.  Well, if Hollywood is to be believed, they are.   Apologies to any US readers, don't blame me, blame John Polson, the director who encouragingly directed the interesting Swimfan (2002) and who then went onto do, erm, some episodes of some minor TV series', but not ALL of them you understand.  Sheesh.  I hope Bob got a really big barbecue pit because he'd need one to cook this turkey.

Released in 2005.
Rated 15.  For what, I don't know.  For the scares?  No.  For the ridiculous special effect of a dead cat?  Are you having a laugh?
'Starring': Robert De Niro, Dakota Fanning, Famke Jannsen, Elizabeth Shue, That Bloke from Disclosure and who also starred in that other film with Kevin Costner about JFK.  No, not THAT other one about JFK, the other OTHER one.
Apparently, Dakota Fanning took a pay cut from her usual million dollar fee a film just to have her name as star billing next to Robert De Niro's.  What's wrong with these people?