Sex and the pity: Sam Rockwell gets too much action, not enough love, just enough lactose, in mostly impotent Choke

It took a long time, but Sam Rockwell has finally become Edward Norton. The process was subtle at first, starting maybe with mistaking Rockwell’s face in promo materials for Norton’s, like how you might have initially mistaken Jake Gyllenhaal for Tobey Maguire. But things have now come full circle with Rockwell’s starring role in Choke, the second movie to be made from a Chuck Palahniuk novel, the first being Fight Club, nearly ten years old now, the movie that confirmed Norton as something kind of exhilaratingly unique amongst his peers, a guy who can be an absolutely fearful thug while never seeming less than vulnerable, intelligent and spookily precise. Rockwell, an altogether shaggier leading man, of course has his own distinct traits, and that special hubris that expresses itself through chronic bad hair. Yet his vague if nagging resemblance to Norton—a resemblance certainly more rewarding to consider than the one he bears to Dana Carvey—is accentuated by his equally considerable talents, often viscerally pointed presence, and that schoolboy face that masks something invariably desperate, sinister or seedy.

If only Choke had even the slightest chance of being the simultaneously commercial and cult success that Fight Club remains. The directorial debut of Clark Gregg—one of those actors you’ve seen a dozen times and every time wonder, where did I see that guy?—the movie reassures us that there’s no variation on transgressive behaviour that can’t be co-opted by banal rom-com convention. Choke is about a historical interpreter and rabid sex addict (Rockwell), a ruddy, glum slob of a man rarely outdone with regards to nihilistic crassness, yet with his severe Oedipal complex coming to a head just as the pretty doctor (Kelly MacDonald) looking after his increasingly demented mom (Angelica Huston) starts to come on all tenderly, the movie boils down to that slightest of concoctions: the reform-the-gigolo fable. It’s a movie you could probably take your auntie to, listen to her cluck her tongue at, and when it’s over share a hug for having seen a movie about what in the end was really just a sweet guy in need of some direction.

Gregg’s approach to the material is a mess of conflicting intentions. The opening sequence alone, with Nathan Larson’s fussy, heavily punctuated, whimsical score, the insistently overstated voice-over Rockwell does his best to dignify, the crappy digital cinematography (which, incredibly, comes courtesy of David Gordon Green regular Tim Orr, otherwise one of the finest in the business) and the little CGI “fantasy” inserts making very awkward bedfellows, conveys nothing in the vicinity of directorial assurance. Every other element seems to apologize for the story’s fundamental scuzzyness, which is problematic since most of the better gags arise from this very scuz, like the scene where Gregg himself, in a supporting role, takes consolation from Rockwell while the girl Gregg’s in love with lays asleep in a haystack with Rockwell’s dick in her fist.

Paternity, persona, identity—ostensibly meaty themes are slapped on like house paint in an effort to elevate the story from what’s essentially a Rob Schneider vehicle. Duration, too, seems tied up in the gambit for seeming legitimacy—the movie’s draggy incessant flashbacks make it feel positively Oscar-length. Yet how weird is this: Huston is kind of terrific, especially in those flashbacks, lovely, charismatic, playing another crooked and/or cracked mom (see The Grifters, Buffalo 66, The Darjeeling Limited), this one’s idea of a family outing being breaking into a zoo at night and releasing a pissed-off lynx. MacDonald is done no favours by her vacuously quirky, baldly convenient romantic interest, but Rockwell for his part, going for broke, makes you almost kinda care. It helps a lot when he’s funny, which, through no fault of his own, he often isn’t. But now that he’s fulfilled his evolutionary promise of Nortonation, maybe he’ll get the roles he deserves, instead of getting stuck in this friendly version of The Tom Sizemore Story.