Tricked (2012)

Like most maverick auteurs, Paul Verhoeven’s name brings forth a variety of opinions from both fans and critics. Those who dismiss Verhoeven’s work often cite his predilection towards extremities, particularly in the sex and violence departments. While its true that Verhoeven is a master of excess, his films bear all the hallmarks of having their cake and eating it too. To fans, Verhoeven is one of cinema’s greatest satirists with the majority of his films featuring a biting, often sardonic sense of humor and with an anti-authoritarian political edge. Unfortunately, not everybody seems to get Verhoeven’s brand of comedy. Looking back, it seems miraculous that the satire of RoboCop (1987) was widely recognized as it seems to be the only one of Verhoeven’s films where the humor didn’t completely fly over the heads of dense critics. Despite the following that Showgirls (1995) has garnered, there still are those that can’t quite grasp the fierce satirical wit the film possesses and with Starship Troopers (1997), Verhoeven was amazingly accused of being the very thing the film was lampooning. After returning to Holland to helm Black Book (2006), Verhoven did something fascinating by turning to the public to find the material for his next project. The result of the experiment was the mini-film Tricked, which saw Verhoeven’s blackly comedic side come to the forefront for one of his most side-splitting and fun, albeit brief efforts.

During his 50th birthday party thrown by his wife, Remco, an unfaithful businessman gets quite the shock when his former mistress Nadja shows up at the party eight months pregnant. To make matters worse, Remco soon learns that his two business partners are attempting to buy him out of his shares of his company. Knowing Remco’s situation, Merel, the best friend of Remco’s daughter Lieke and also Remco’s current mistress, senses that something just isn’t right, and along with Remco’s son Tobias begins to investigate to uncover the truth about Remco’s troubles.

The elephant in the room in regards to Tricked (Steekspel) would be the fact that, again, it is technically a mini-film and with a brisk run time of only 55 minutes its inevitable that a feeling of what could have been had the film been an extra 25-30 minutes longer will arise. At the same time, for a 55 minute mini-film, Tricked is absolutely perfect and the most fun 55 minutes anyone can spend in front of a screen. While the film doesn’t feature any of the sociopolitical satire that Verhoeven is famous for, the films humor is nevertheless pure Verhoeven. The film is comparable to Showgirls in that the style of humor on display is incredibly barbed and more often than not is based on the characters behaving not so nicely to each other in the most hilarious of ways. Naturally, Remco is the butt of the majority of the films jokes, however nobody in spared and some of the films most laugh out loud moments are the jabs and insults hurled between the characters of Lieke and Tobias and Verhoeven also throws in a brilliant gross-out gag involving vomit and a floating bloody tampon which harkens back to Verhoeven’s Turkish Delight (1973) days. Along with all the laughs, Verhoeven of course makes time for somewhat of a mystery although it gets solved rather quickly which moves the film along quite nicely as part of the fun becomes wondering how certain characters will react to certain situations which leads to more hilarity.

One of the most fascinating things regarding Tricked is the way the film was crafted with the first three professionally written pages of the script posted online and the rest of the film constructed from submissions from the public, a process that Verhoeven admitted became much more complicated than originally anticipated. While speaking to the BBC, Verhoeven stated “There were some great ideas, but their main failing was that they had no idea of narrative structure. They didn’t know how to build to a crescendo, for everything to come to a head, so we could actually have an ending... Before we started this, I just imagined that I would get two or three scripts that would be outstanding, and myself and (co-writer Robert Thijm) would say, ‘okay, these are the best ideas and we’ll take this from script number two, and this from script number three’ – and half a day later we’ll be putting the finished material up online. Absolutely no way.  Not a chance. It took at least ten days each time to look at the material. It was a nightmare.” In the hands of a lesser director, taking such a chance could have ended in disaster but with a master like Verhoeven at the helm, Tricked ultimately became not just a successful experiment but a testament to Verhoeven’s drive to not become stagnant and a must watch for Verhoeven fans.