Tame 'Zipper' never really closes the deal
<h3 class="briefHead">Mini-review: 'Zipper'</h3>
In light of the massive Ashley Madison "Affairs-R-Us" hacking scandal, the extramarital dalliances of a sex-addicted rising political star in Mora Stephens' drama "Zipper" seem almost passe.
Ever since his stellar turn as a philandering family man in Todd Field's sharply observed "Little Children," Patrick Wilson has apparently become the go-to-guy to play sexually self-abusing men ruled by ids.
He plays Sam Ellis, a husband, dad and successful federal prosecutor who, once he experiences the perks of the Executive Privilege escort service, goes on a wild binge to match Wilt Chamberlain's reported liaisons with 20,000 women.
"Game of Thrones" mainstay Lena Headey plays his wife Jeannie, a supposedly sharp attorney who doesn't notice Sam's inexplicably emptied banks accounts or any other telltale signs of carousing.
Richard Dreyfus (still channeling Dick Cheney) plays a shrewd political strategist interested in exploiting Sam's squeaky clean image during an upcoming U.S. Senate race.
Screenwriters Stephens and Joel Viertel paint a bleak, cynical picture of marriage as part of a larger hypocritical political process, but these characters are so thinly designed, and Sam's situation so ludicrously positioned (escorts never watch TV news and see Sam's omnipresent face?) that this "Zipper" gets stuck halfway up to the moral outrage it clearly wants to inspire.
<b>"Zipper" opens at Facets Multimedia in Chicago. Rated R for language, nudity, sexual situations. 104 minutes. ★ ½</b>