The Gold Coast in Australia looks positively gorgeous in "Absolute Deception," a film from 2013 which stars Cuba Gooding, Jr., Emmanuelle Vaugier, Ty Hungerford, and Evert McQueen.
The plot is derivative, about a reporter, Rebecca Scott (Vaugier) who finds out that her dead husband, supposedly killed in a car accident two years earlier, has actually just died in Australia, living under the name Miles Archer, and married to someone else. He was about to be put into the Witness Protection Program. An accountant, he had his hand in the billion-dollar cookie jar of his new boss, a Bernie Madoff type named Osterberg. In order to avoid being killed, he was turning evidence over to the FBI. But Nelson doesn't get to him in time and sees him killed. So he's dead again.
Rebecca heads for Australia to find out what happened. There she runs into Nelson, Osterberg, and an obstinate Police Inspector Hendricks. Basically they would all be happy if she would just go home.
The acting is awful. Emmanuelle Vaugier is beautiful, but there is no chemistry at all between her and Gooding. Gooding does okay, but I have a feeling he just phoned it in. She definitely did. I noticed posts about her eyebrows. If you're watching a film and noticing someone's eyebrows, how into it can you be? There's a twist at the end but by then I'm afraid not many people cared. Very by the numbers, slow in spots, badly acted, and boring. But as I said, nice scenery.
