If this direct-to-DVD crime thriller had an appropriate level of sex and violence, it might have been almost tolerable. Don't get me wrong. Bound by Lies was never going to be good in any meaningful sense of the word, but it could have been an adequate slice of low brow entertainment. After cramming a car chase, gun fight, explosion and furtive glimpse of breasts into the first 5 minutes of the movie, however, the rest is nothing but a bunch of actors stumbling through an inane plot while mouthing even more inane dialog. There's no nudity, no action, no comedy, no drama. It just slowly deflates like an ugly party balloon.
Max Garrett (Stephen Baldwin) is a detective just back from suspension after a fiasco where he got a suspect killed and a witness disappeared. The movie opens with Max being interrogated about the disaster, interspersed with flashbacks to what happened. Max turns in his gun and badge for a 6 month suspension, then the story jumps forward to Max back on the force and none of the stuff that happened at the beginning has anything to do with the rest of the film. The witness who disappeared does not come back or anything like that.
The reason Bound By Lies begins this way is obviously because someone realized the rest of the movie was duller than the proverbial dishwater and threw in an explosive prologue to try and disguise that for as long as possible. After that reasonably exciting opening, we see Max and his wife Diana (Gladys Jimenez) and get a brief look at her boobs. Then I watched the film for another half hour, waiting for more sex and violence, before it dawned on my that there wasn't going to be any. So, while I'll tip my cap to these filmmakers for tricking me, I'd also like to put my boot in their ass for wasting my time and attention.
Getting back to the narrative, Max is called out to a dead body in an alley and meets his new partner, Lieutenant Eddie Fulton (Charles Malik Whitfield). Eddie thinks it's an open and shut case but Max wants to investigate and winds up interviewing Laura Cross (Kristy Swanson), an artist who lives in a building off the alley and takes bondage photographs. Kristy Swanson does not get naked in this movie. Randi (Natassia Malthe) is Laura's lesbian assistant. Natassia Malthe does not get naked in this movie. I'm emphasizing that to make sure you don't waste your time with this thing.
Anyway, at first Max suspects Laura of being a killer, then it turns out her building's super (Kevin Chamberlin) is the killer and Max has to guard Laura while the super is on the loose. Max discovers an architecturally dubious attic where he can look through peepholes into Laura's loft. An art critic gets killed. Max and Laura fall in love. The super kidnaps Max's wife, leading to a rooftop showdown where the super ties himself to Laura with 50 feet of wire. No, the 50 feet of wire thing doesn't make any sense in the film, either. And to repeat, there's no nudity or violence while any of that is going on.
The performances of Swanson, Stephen Baldwin and the rest of the cast are perfectly acceptable for this sort of thing. The direction of Valerie Landsburg is also perfectly acceptable for this sort of thing. The overpowering problem is that this sort of thing needs to have, and usually does have, a goodly portion of sex and violence. People taking off their clothes. People getting punched or shot or set on fire. Stuff getting blow'd up real nice. And there's none of that in Bound by Lies after the fraudulent first five minutes.
This movie isn't aggressively horrible, but it is without any redeeming value. If you want to see Swanson and Baldwin in a film that succeeds at being an adequate slice of low brow entertainment, go rent Zebra Lounge. Do not spend any of you precious moments on this nonsense.
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