Italian indie thriller “The Contract,” starring Kevin Spacey as a character named “The Devil,” is set to world premiere at the Cairo Film Festival this week, without Spacey on the red carpet in the Egyptian capital’s Opera House.
In the film, Spacey plays a role that has been described in promotional materials as somewhat akin to Al Pacino’s role in “Devil’s Advocate”– or as Satan who takes the guise of a human lawyer. The tagline of the rather rudimentary poster for “The Contract” is “When Hell Surrounds You The Devil Is Your Last Hope.”
In the trailer, for what looks like a low-budget TV movie, Spacey’s character, is seen screaming lines such as: “I can feel it when they lie to me on purpose, and I go crazy!” and “I don’t care about the past, it’s all long gone!”
The psychological thriller is directed by Italy’s Massimo Paolucci and also stars Eric Roberts and Vincent Spano, It will bow in Cairo on Nov. 14, with the film’s Italian team comprising Paolucci, the film’s producer Massimiliano Caroletti and cast members Jennifer Caroletti, Mercedesz Henger and Fabrizio Eleuteri.
Roberts plays a down-and-out “egocentric” journalist named Giuseppe who is obsessed with making a scoop to revive his career. In his his drive to make this scoop Giuseppe intersects with “The Devil,” who provides help but eventually finds out that he has been manipulated all along by the character played by Spacey, according to the provided synopsis.
The “House of Cards” star’s career imploded amid allegations of sexual misconduct in 2017, but he has since been found not liable in an October 2022 lawsuit brought by “Star Trek: Discovery” actor Anthony Rapp and was declared not guilty in a U.K. sexual assault trial in July 2023.
In March, Spacey was back on U.S. movie screens with indie thriller “Peter Five Eight,” also starring Rebecca de Mornay, which got mostly ignored by critics and marked Spacey’s first leading role since being cleared in the London trial.
Paolucci’s previous works include action film “All in One Day,” which plays on Prime Video in Italy; horror-crime movie “Medium”; and slasher/horror “Photoshock.” He also served as a line producer on Dario Argento’s much maligned flop “Dracula 3D.” “The Contract” producers are Massimiliano Caroletti for TM Entertainment and Sandro Lazzerini.
Spacey returned to acting after 2017 by playing a police detective in another Italian low-budget indie drama “The Man Who Drew God,” directed by Franco Nero. He also had a voiceover role in Gene Fallaize’s indie thriller “Control.”
