1996 lesbian thrillerRating: 10/20
Plot: Following her release from a prison sentence, lesbian Corky gets a job as a maintenance lesbian in building. She meets lesbian Violet, the wife of a mafia guy. They concoct a plan to steal 2 million dollars in mafia money, but not before they engage in lots and lots of lesbianism.
Wachowski Brothers' first flick certainly has some neat gimmicks but suffers from having the general generic feel and look of an after-school special. A really graphic after-school special. There are moments that are bearable, but the acting of Jennifer Tilly is simply unbearable. Lots of unintentionally funny moments apparently result when you give Jennifer Tilly really bad lines to read. Gina Gershon isn't much better, and I suspect most of the problem is that the dialogue is so terribly written. Joe Pantoliano is pretty Joe Pantolianoish and as entertaining as he usually is, but there's so much dopeyness around him. It doesn't help that the whole thing looks like an excuse to show some cheap lesbian action. It's better than that last Matrix movie though.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Was Jennifer monitoring your review? As a general rule of thumb, a little graphic lesbian action never hurt any movie, but in this film it is both a slight distraction and it undercuts any positive reviews. The naughty stuff is almost like a seperate movie and climaxes in the first 15 minutes. From then on this film is very stylish, tense and entertaining. Pantoliano is terrific (worth an extra 3 points)and the plot is very unpredictable. It is a modern film-noir that had me alternating between laughter and edge-of-my-seat suspense. I will give you that Gershon (the co-star of "Showgirls", no less) and Tilly (it's Jennifer Tilly!) are not the world's greatest actresses, but they are good in this movie. It's not for all tastes, but "Bound" is a great thriller with 15 minutes of soft-porn prelude. Not that there's anything wrong with that. An 18!
ReplyDeleteThat's a very heterosexual review you've written there.
ReplyDeleteVery stylish? I'll give you semi-stylish, but it's not very stylish. With a few moments being the exception, I thought the direction was pretty blah. There was some suspense and I like how things just spiral out of control for Pantoliano's character. An 18? Seriously? That's 'Holy Mountain' territory!
Tilly's played poker better than she acted in this, and I've never seen her play poker all that well.