Choke Gets Off a Great Rape Line

Choke, multi-hyphenate Clark Gregg’s fun adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s freewheeling novel, has a lot of great lines and rejoinders in it, but the most outrageous and punch-to-the-gut-funny might come when Sam Rockwell’s sex addict hooks up with an anonymous ball-buster whose very specific fantasies about being overpowered (safety word: poodle!) and threatened with a knife give way to much hectoring, which leads Rockwell’s character to spit, “Why don’t you just shut the fuck up and let me rape you my way?” It’s proof to the contrary for anyone who thinks film has lost its capacity to shock merely through language. One assumes Deborah Kampmeier would almost assuredly not be amused.