‘Verity’ Serves Up a Veritable Feast of Hokum

“Verity” is a glossy, erotic, wealth-porn, plot-driven thriller — a bait-and-switch diversion, primarily aimed at women over 30. Truth to be told, it’s the kind of swill that straight dudes who aren’t married or in a relationship tend to dislike. Synthetic chick flicks, like last year’s “The Housemaid” or 2024’s ”It Ends with Us,” are always about lying, deception, infidelity, vicious hidden agendas, sudden bursts of violence and — no surprise at all — a third-act twist in which the lead male (a husband or live-in boyfriend or an amorous boss) is revealed to be a lying, cheating, murdering louse. For female-created pulp fiction these days seems increasingly committed to a widespread view that most wealthy dudes are lying, disloyal scumbags who will schtup the maid or your best friend or any half-attractive unattached woman who happens along. The 48-year-old Josh Hartnett is the resident “Verity” pig — a seemingly loving, considerate, cash-flush husband of Anne Hathaway’s titular character, a writer of popular hardback women’s fiction who… here we go with a convoluted plot rundown. Maybe I’d better back up. Okay, I’ll stay with Mr. Hartnett for a minute. You know right away that Mr. Hartnett’s Jeremy is a liar and a phony by how he talks to little kids. He leans over and grins like an idiot as he converses with this or that tyke, always with a gleeful expression that says “whoo-whoo!” Mature adults, trust me, always talk to little kids as if they’re 30 years old — it’s the only way to go. But not Mr. Hartnett, the eager-beaver schmuck.The real schmuck, of course, is director Michael Showalter, who guided Josh Hartnett’s performance; ditto Ms. Hathaway’s Verity, of course, as well as Dakota Johnson’s portrayal of Lowen Ashleigh, an accomplished but struggling writer who accepts a live-in gig as Verity’s ghostwriter after she becomes paralyzed from a car crash. We get to hang with an animated, non-paralyzed Ms. Hathaway via flashbacks, including a few sex scenes, but for most of the present-day story Verity is physically immobilized.Dakota Johnson in ‘Verity.’ Amazon/ MGM StudiosThe primary architect of this phony-baloney thriller is Colleen Hoover, the 47-year-old author of the original book version of “Verity”, published in 2018, as well as “It Ends with Us,” published in 2016. Nick Antosca adapted Hoover’s 2018 original into a workable and serviceable screenplay. You know going in that Ms. Hathaway’s Verity is hiding some terrible secret or waiting to spring an audience fake-out. Ditto Mr. Hartnett, of course. Ms Johnson’s Lowen is the only straight-shooter — basically the audience’s vantage point and fairly trustworthy as far as it goes.But what’s really cool about the plot of “Verity,” at least in terms of topicality, is it involves a mother seemingly killing one of her children a la Lindsay Clancy as though it is ripped from recent headlines! On top of which the tyke murder is apparently done with an overturned canoe and a paddle, which is almost exactly the way Shelley Winters was drowned by Montgomery Clift in George Stevens’ “A Place in The Sun” (1950).Regarding parallels and similarities, Hartnett’s Jeremy looks like the whiskered twin brother of Brandon Sklenar, who plays the good boyfriend in “It Ends with Us” as well as the bad husband in “The Housemaid.” And child actor Brady Wagner, who plays Jeremy and Verity’s androgynous son Crew, strongly resembles the young “Fatal Attraction” actress who played Michael Douglas and Anne Archer’s daughter Ellen, portrayed 39 years ago by Ellen Hamilton Latzen.You know what really bothered me about “Verity”? The dialogue is constantly being muttered, murmured and whispered, and you can’t hear half of it. Remember when actors and actresses would speak fairly clearly in films, and you didn’t have to lean forward in your seat and cup your ears in order to hear what they’re saying?“Verity” works hard at delivering a few scenes featuring heavy breathing with discreetly draped nudity and flat bellies. And the Vermont country house that Jeremy and Verity live in is really quite the bucks-up abode. Everything inside looks like a home that only a billionaire could afford. The roof has twelve dramatic gables. But the plot is basically one cheap tease after another. The opening scene is literally a bloody embarrassment. While waiting at a 42nd Street crosswalk, Ms. Johnson is splattered with a half-bucket of Type-O blood after a car slams into a bike messenger. She’s literally drenched in red makeup sauce, her hair caked with the stuff, her sweater soaked and dripping. No bike messenger or pedestrian hit by a Manhattan bus or a cab or an Uber driver has ever spewed blood like the shot-full-of-holes Ernest Borgnine or William Holden or Ben Johnson or Warren Oates during the classic shoot-out at the end of Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” (1969). It’s completely absurd, but that’s what “Verity” is basically selling. This movie is bunk and hokum in spades.

‘Verity’ Serves Up a Veritable Feast of Hokum

‘Verity’ Serves Up a Veritable Feast of Hokum

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