directors/screenwriters
Andy Wachowski
Larry Wachowski
producers
Stuart Boros
Andrew Lazar
cinematographer
Bill Pope
music
Don Davis
editor
Zach Staenberg
cast
Gina Gershon (Corky)
Jennifer Tilly (Violet)
Joe Pantoliano (Caesar)
Mary Mara (Bartender)
Susie Bright (Jesse)
Christopher Meloni (Johnnie Marzzone)
John P. Ryan (Micky Malnato)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 109m
u.s.
release: October 4,
1996
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other wachowski
bros. films
reviewed on this website:
- the
matrix
- the
matrix reloaded
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Every year, it seems, critics
go nuts over a movie so lame that I think the critics didn't
go nuts -- the critics are nuts. Last fall's endlessly
acclaimed (and just plain endless) Heat
was a shining example. Bound, which has "nasty, clever
thriller" stamped all over it, isn't nearly as snoozeworthy
as Heat, but it left me cold and vaguely annoyed. I can
almost hear the writer-director brothers, Andy and Larry Wachowski,
making their pitch to the studio:
"It's about two guys who steal money from the mob."
"Yeah? So? That's been done."
"Okay, so we make 'em two lesbians, and they get
naked and have a sex scene."
"Gentlemen, welcome aboard."
Bound feels exactly that calculated. It's been
praised for its spin on film noir standards, but all it
actually does is reproduce them and arrange them back-to-back,
with many look-Ma-I'm-a-director shots (massive close-ups, ostentatious
angles) that critics have called "knowing nods to the Coen
brothers." Uh-uh. Sorry. These are knowing rip-offs
of the Coen brothers. Always glad to set these things straight.
And let us not forget the lesbians getting naked -- a guaranteed
thumbs-up from male critics, yes? Not this one. These particular
daughters of Sappho -- ex-con plumber Corky (Gina Gershon) and
gangster moll Violet (Jennifer Tilly) -- are two guys' idea of
hip, scheming lesbos. They're immediately attracted to each other,
and they both happen to be criminal masterminds who figure out
how to pinch $2 million from Violet's brain-cell-challenged gangster
boyfriend Caesar (Joe Pantoliano).
If this were done ironically,
with a postmodern awareness of how threadbare the premise is
(Corky just happens to move next door to Violet and Caesar),
Bound might have been as smart and dazzling as it wants
to be. As it is, it's an over-deliberate rewrite of the panting
pulp fiction of the '50s. I've read some, and it's more fun.
In fact, if Bound had been set in the '50s, like one of
Showtime's Rebel Highway goofs a couple of years back,
I'd have gone along with it for a while.
But no, the brothers Wachowski (who wrote last year's coma-inducing
Assassins)
are very much '90s directors, with sex and gore to match (if
I never see another Tarantinoid torture scene, I won't mind a
bit). And their actors are no help. Poor Joe Pantoliano -- he's
been good in other movies, so I'll leave him alone. Tilly seems
to be going for a '40s femme fatale effect, but the only
thing fatal about her is her grating voice. Gershon sports a
ripe smirk and lets her performance ride on it, as she did in
Showgirls.
After a while, what that smirk really seems to say to us is "I'm
getting paid to be here. What's your excuse?"
Well, our excuse is
that we want to be thrilled and entertained and maybe even aroused.
But the sex in Bound is boring and impersonal, and the
whole thing made me tired of thrillers about guns and money and
T&A and dark red blood dripping into white paint (don't ask).
Ooh, how nasty and clever! Nasty, maybe, but as the man said,
there's a fine line between clever and stupid.
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