DECEPTION

Modest chase thriller, Altman’s third, with abundant international color and great pace.

An impossibly young-looking assassin (casual passersby think he’s a boy) efficiently carries out his contract on the Epstein couple only to realize a moment later that he’s killed the wrong Epsteins. Cut to the Adriatic Sea and skittish, single Hannah Gray in her tiny cabin aboard the Aurora II. What should be an idyllic cruise is actually a secret escape. Entangled in a Chicago insurance fraud engineered by her no-account boyfriend Frank, Hannah is on the run using the alias Vicky Ludlow. Chirpy fellow passenger Renee Epstein takes “Vicky” under her wing, even hectoring grumpy husband Stephen into lending the young woman his travel guide. In short order, the man-child assassin reappears to kill these second Epsteins, the whole thing witnessed by Hannah, who flees the Aurora II. The chase is on in earnest, with Hannah now a fugitive twice over. The book she received from Stephen Epstein contains a priceless formula, written inside the back cover. Stateside, retrieval of the formula is engineered by brash bureaucrat Keyes, who has a Moneypenny-like assistant named Daisy. Imposing scientist Ed Greenwich is waiting for the formula, which has to do with nothing less than pricking a hole in the space-time continuum, and the Keyes team stays ahead in a sub rosa international race for it. But allegiances are a bit fuzzy. Keyes has colleagues with eastern European names, and he doesn’t trust subordinates. But is it because of their loyalty or their competence? Quick cuts take us from Hannah on the run to Keyes at the home office to his operatives Leonard (the man-child assassin) and Dietz, dispatched to get the formula at all costs.

Altman (A Game of Spies, 2002, etc.) keeps his multiple balls in the air with deft economy, some twists, and the right ratio of verbs to adjectives.