John Heard and Deceived

This week, a tribute to a journeyman actor and a movie you might have missed. 

Last month, the veteran actor John Heard passed away. As is usually the case when an actor dies, the headline includes the title of his most prominent role. So in John Heard’s case, there were a lot of headlines reading “Home Alone Dad Dies at 72.” So yeah, he was the dad in Chris Columbus’s 1990 Christmastime monster hit. He played the part of the decent but exasperated dad who accidentally flew to Paris not realizing he left one of his kids behind in Chicago. And he did a good job with it – just like he did a good job with a raft of other supporting roles as good dads, bad dads, sheriffs, sons, coworkers, etc. He rarely got the lead but instead was usually the reliable face next to the lead.

However, Heard did play the lead in one largely unseen and unfortunately unappreciated thriller from 1991, Deceived, directed by Damian Harris and co-starring Goldie Hawn back when they made movies that co-starred Goldie Hawn. 

Deceived is an old-school, slow-burn thriller, the kind that aren’t really made much for the big screen anymore. In it, Hawn plays Adrienne, an art restorer who meets and falls in love with a man named Jack Saunders at the outset of the film. Heard plays Jack and is all charm, good looks, and husbandly attentiveness for six years. They have a cute daughter together, they live in a great apartment, and everything is idyllic and perfect until its not. Strange occurrences start to pile up around Jack. He’s supposed to be away on a business trip but one of Adrienne’s friends sees him around town in New York. There’s a call from a department store about some sexy lingerie that Adrienne is sure she never got from Jack. And so on. Just as things look increasingly shady for Jack, he dies in a fiery car accident. End of story? Not so fast. It soon becomes apparent that Jack perhaps wasn’t Jack at all. Adrienne discovers he has a second family, complete with cute kids and another wife with another baby on the way, and as far as that family is concerned, Dad is just fine and will be home from a business trip soon.

So from there, the tension ratchets up as Adrienne discovers what it was that Jack wanted and why he had to disappear and the lengths to which he will go to get what he wants.

Parts of the plot are contrived, for sure, but much of Deceived works. Heard especially is fun to watch. He had the acting chops to fluidly transition from trustworthy nice guy to psychotic nutjob in a flash. By the time the story builds to its climax, Heard’s character is genuinely scary – primarily because he was so effective at being a good guy at the beginning. When Kubrick made The Shining, Stephen King objected to him casting Jack Nicholson as the family man writer who eventually goes mad. His problem was that Nicholson already looked crazy, so his character had nowhere to go. In the case of John Heard and Deceived, he definitely had somewhere to go. Though not often thought of as a serious actress, Goldie Hawn does a nice job as a smart career woman, and even though the film is a drama, she manages to illicit a few laughs with some clever line delivery. The cinematography is surprisingly polished and rich, and there’s some nice direction by director Damian Harris, who for lovers of Hollywood trivia, is the son of the great Richard Harris, the original Dumbledore, and brother of Jared Harris of Mad Men fame.

Deceived opened well back in 1991 but then sank into obscurity, which I think is too bad. It was a moment for John Heard to step into the spotlight and show that he could do more than just be Kevin McCallister’s dad.