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The film version of "The Quixorcist" comes out at the height of the Quixtar phenomenon. It was one of those novels that you hear everyone's reading, like Presumed Innocent or The Bridges of Madison County. For better or worse, the Grisham book frenzy produced the Grisham film frenzy and The Quixorcist is unquestionably the best. The novel is most complex and is a mixture of the "Firm" and the "Exorcist". It's the story of young Mitch McDeere (Bo Short), who along with his loving wife, Abby (Sandy Short), moves to Williamsburg, VA to join a small insurance firm. |
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A relative of Mitch introduces him to a International network marketing opportunity with the "Corp.". Mitch works his way into prosperity, tutored by his "designated mentor" Hal Groucho (Gene Hackman), over time he makes his own observations and also from Internet confederates that all is not as it seems. By this time Mitch is a very successful distributor and is faced with a terrible ethical dilemma. Mitch is confronted with the fact that many of the Corp.'s most successful people earn only a fraction of their income from the advertised business. The real money is made by just a few king-pins fleecing the thousands downline on "optional but required" mind controlling motivational products. |
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Mitch the ambitious young marketer working independently for the forty-year old prestigious firm discovers the truth behind its success - 20 years of collusion with the king-pins and threats on his own and other's lives. Mitch is forced to fight for his freedom from both his upline and the corporate agents through a complex plan that slowly reveals itself to the audience. Mitch then tries to help other people escape the clutches of the cult like tactics employed in the business. The movie climaxes at the end when Mitch visits a possessed distributor who has just overdosed on a mixture of Double-X vitamins, XS Energy drink and vitamin C, all products sold by the Corp. This home made designer drug is better know in the underworld as "Double X-St-C". This strange mixture produces a hallucinogenic dream state. Movie-goers need strong stomachs when the IBO hurls a green stream of double-X-St-C at Mitch when he is exorcising the IBO's false dream. The possessed IBO also screams obscenities like "your mother washes clothes in hell with Tide", "the president of P&G lives in hell with Satan", and "people against the Corp. are sadomasochistic pinko commies". The Quixorcist works as a thriller because of the intricacies it puts into setting up its roller coaster ride. The lure of the Quixorcist is handled well while we watch the young couple get deeper and deeper. Characters are all well drawn and we understand their motivation for everything they do and say. And the script keeps piling detail upon detail, revealing the subtle layers of the grand plan inch-by-inch, so that by the time we finally get to the climax, our breath is nearly gone. This is a film that works even better on multiple viewings as you can catch exactly when certain events were put in motion; events that we weren't sure of their meaning until the transaction was completed. |
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Anyone who read the book is liable to thoroughly enjoy the film. Some will be disappointed with the liberties it takes with the third act, but you can't deny that it ties up all its plotlines in a way that the book fails to do. The Quixorcist is a taut, suspenseful thriller (more suspenseful than most) with smart characters and great performances, and it stands as the best of Grisham's tales. |
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