The Hoax (15) ****

There's a delicious joke in Lasse Hallstrom's movie featuring a clip of Richard Nixon singing the praises of one George Bush. It has to be from around 1970 when Bush sr was making his second, unsuccessful bid for the Senate, but the immediate assumption is that he's talking about the current occupant of the White House, and a big laugh ensues.

It's a ruse worthy of this seductively smart caper based on the true story of hoaxer Clifford Irving.

In his day, Irving perpetrated a publishing con that made the Hitler Diaries look like amateur hour. The writer of a couple of well-regarded but unsuccessful novels was having trouble getting publishers interested in his latest ideas, so he came up with plan B - he would co-write the autobiography of the world's most famous recluse, the billionaire Howard Hughes.

Only trouble was, Hughes knew nothing about it. That didn't stop Irving convincing others he had the goods to sell.

For such a con to work, Irving had to be a consummate actor, the ultimate charmer. Who better to play him than Richard Gere, a man whose eyes first started twinkling three decades ago in American Gigolo and have been giving stellar service since.

Gere hasn't had much of a chance to shine since Chicago five years ago. After the cheesy Shall We Dance and the bizarre Bee Season he's in need of a hit the way Irving needed a publishing deal. In Hallstrom's film he lands one.

The three times Oscar-nominated Hallstrom, director of The Shipping News and The Cider House Rules, tells Irving's story with brio, starting in the middle, when the scheme was in its final stages, before drawing back and showing how matters advanced that far.

This is a director who appreciates that the art of the con movie lies in showing not what was done, but how.

Like all great scams, Irving's was brilliantly simple, relying for the most part on other people's gullibility and their desire for what was happening to be true. Irving's publisher, played by Hope Davis, can't see the holes in Irving's story because she's dazzled by dollar signs.

To reveal too much about the "how" of the con would spoil your enjoyment of the movie. It's enough to say that Hallstrom and his scriptwriter William Wheeler, who wrote the excellent The Prime Gig, are like crazed magicians, pulling rabbit after rabbit after rabbit out of the hat. They make Irving look so daring and glamorous we almost want him to succeed, and the moments when he is on the brink of being rumbled make the heart race.

By my reckoning, the script pulls one too many bunnies out of the hat. Irving, whose book of the same name was the basis for the movie, has said he had nothing to do with Hallstrom's film and vice versa.

Wheeler has certainly played around with events. While that may offend purists, it might be looked upon as all part of the grand game. Where better to monkey around with reality than in a film about a hoax?

Wheeler's tricks, the Nixon-Bush instance being a case in point, are more to be admired than scorned. What does begin to irritate is the way the plot becomes increasingly, and needlessly, convoluted, forcing Gere into ever more improbable situations.

While it's touch and go at times, Gere somehow manages to pull it off. It's a marvellous performance. Gere can do swagger and bluff in his sleep. Where he proves a revelation here is the way he portrays self-doubt, the storm below the surface calm.

His Irving is a mess of insecurities. He is hungry for fame, success, adoration, much more than the money. Even when he achieves his goal there remains a gnawing feeling of emptiness, a sense that he's still not good enough. As a portrait of sweaty, middle-aged doubt it's a masterpiece. Credit should go, too, to Alfred Molina as Irving's researcher, Dick Susskind.

While Gere does his best to hide his anxiety, Molina lets it all hang out. In this he functions as the audience's official representative. As the tension ratchets up, his frayed nerves are our frayed nerves.

If the story becomes a trifle overheated at times, Hallstrom's recreation of seventies America is cool and classy throughout. He captures perfectly the sleazy air of the era, when hoaxes perpetrated by little men like Irving were as nothing compared with what was going on higher up the food chain. He even manages to hint at a link between the two. How? Now that would be telling.