CHOKE's protagonist, Victor Mancini, shouldn't be a likable character. He's an unrepentant sex addict who has sex with the woman he's supposed to be sponsoring. He purposely chokes in restaurants so that rich patrons will save him and send him money. And he sometimes wishes that his mother, who suffers from dementia, would just get it over with and die. But because Victor is played--and played quite well--by Sam Rockwell (THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY), it's hard not to have a little sympathy for him. He spends his days working at a colonial tourist attraction with his best friend, Denny (Brad William Henke), incurring the wrath of his authenticity-craving boss (Clark Gregg, who also directed and wrote the film). His evenings are spent visiting his mother (Oscar winner Anjelica Huston) in a private hospital, but she mistakes her son for men in her past and wonders when Victor will visit. But young, pretty Dr. Paige Marshall (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN's Kelly Macdonald) has a radical idea about treatment that may bring his mother's mind back, and Victor's devotion to his mother--and a desire to sleep with Dr. Marshall--makes him eager to try.

CHOKE rivals some soft-core porn with its abundance of sex, nudity, and adult toys, but there's more here than just the shocking and the steamy. This dark comedy is based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, most famous for writing the book FIGHT CLUB. Like the adaptation of that novel, CHOKE is a surefire cult favorite that meditates on the themes of culture, religion, fathers, sexuality, and identity. It's a mean, misanthropic film at times, but similar to its protagonist, it's hard not to like. Gregg has made an assured directorial debut, and his script retains the blackly humorous tone of the novel.