Hoax, The

Aroview: Solid Lasse Hallstrom-directed ‘literary hoax’ recounts the true story of Clifford Irving, a struggling writer allegedly commissioned by the reclusive Howard Hughes to pen his memoirs in 1971 – a claim that sent the American public and publishing world into a feeding frenzy.

Taking full advantage of the scandalous details while making perceptive connections to the decade’s paranoia and political deception, Hallstrom’s film is an absorbing biopic keenly aware of its subject's propensity to stretch the truth (it is, after all, based on the scam artist’s own ‘autobiography’). Accomplished in cast and production, this is letdown only by a lack of charisma in Gere’s lead performance that doesn't quite live up to Irving's magnetic personality and the audaciousness his big white lie.

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