REVIEW: Deception ? R

 The story Jonathan McQuarry (Ewan McGregor) is, as he says, “sort of an accountant.” He works in New York corporate offices, checking company books. “I sit and see life literally passing me by,” he tells new acquaintance, lawyer Wyatt Bose (Hugh Jackman). “I try to meet people but it doesn’t seem to work out.” Bose is easy to talk to. He brings shy people like McQuarry out. Bose introduces McQuarry to The Line — a cell phone sex club for busy executives. “Are you free tonight?” is the opening question. The rules are simple. No business talk. No rough stuff. No names. “Intimacy without intricacy,” his first partner says. McQuarry discovers a side of himself he didn’t know existed. “This is so not my life,” he says.Things get complicated when McQuarry falls for a young blonde woman (Michelle Williams), about whom he knows only that her first name begins with “S.” She suddenly disappears. Can McQuarry find her? What is Wyatt Bose’s game? Into what life-threatening intricacies has McQuarry fallen? Interesting questions, but “Deception” is better in its setup than its plot development.ActorsEwan McGregor is nerdy as repressed Jonathan McQuarry. “The order and symmetry of numbers appeal to me,” he says. He can’t see without his glasses. He wears cheap suits and apologizes for asking the super to fix a leak in his apartment ceiling. As successful Princeton lawyer Wyatt Bose, Hugh Jackman is McGregor’s opposite. He’s smooth, wears $4,000 suits, owns an art collection and is a swinger. Soon, he’s manipulating McQuarry. “You’ve got no killer instinct,” Bose says.Michelle Williams is mystery woman “S.” She is a cipher — no name, no address, no career, no past. Through the middle third of the movie, she’s gone. Others in the cast include Lisa Gay Hamilton as NYPD Detective Russo and Charlotte Rampling as a successful Wall Street analyst with whom McQuarry has an assignation.Other comments“Deception” is a thriller that doesn’t thrill. Mostly it’s because the script — by Mark Bomback — is truly lame. Plot twists occur without explanation. Characters act without motivation. The endings — there are two — are ludicrous. Director Marcel Langenegger doesn’t help. A brief suspense scene toward the end is inert. Continuity disappears. Poor Jonathan, who couldn’t see a thing without his glasses in the first hour, functions beautifully in the last 30 minutes without them. (Maybe he got contacts.) “Deception” looks dark — thanks to photography by Dante Spinotti — but it’s no film noir. Rated R for sex, language, violence and drugs, it runs 108 minutes — but seems longer. I’d avoid this one.  Final wordsWho is who, cat and mouse —“Deception” is the game,Forgettable charactersAnd a plot that’s truly lame.