The Tie That Binds

Thoroughly repugnant and wretched melodrama has the foster couple to a little girl terrorized by the child's psychopathic biological parents, who are on the lam from the police. Warped, irresponsible picture with thriller aspirations is more stupid than suspenseful. Director Wesley Strick seems to have fallen asleep at the wheel, how else to explain the piling up of one ludicrous situation atop another? Stars Daryl Hannah and Keith Carradine can't even scrape together the semblance of believability within this context, and both are at a loss (as the "innocents", Moira Kelly and Vincent Spano don't have it quite as bad, but their general lack of charisma puts them at a disadvantage regardless). Tiresome, unsubtle junk. NO STARS from ****