BOUND
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
(Gramercy) Starring: Jennifer Tilly, Gina Gershon, Joe Pantoliano. Screenplay: Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski. Producers: Andrew Lazar, Stewart Boros. Directors: Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski. Running Time: 108 minutes. MPAA Rating: R (violence, adult themes, nudity, sexual situations, profanity) Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
It's always the same old story: There's a poor sap just out of the joint, just trying to make a buck to get by. Then along comes a dame, getting real friendly even though she's already mixed up with a guy, only she says the guy is bad news and she wants the poor sap to help her get out...and there's money as part of the bargain. Yep, it's the same old story...except that in BOUND, the poor sap is another woman. You might expect BOUND to try to cruise along on little more than its gender-bending premise, but you would be wrong. BOUND is a wickedly entertaining thriller with a gloriously manic performance by Joe Pantoliano, and it doesn't need gimmicks to succeed.
Our resident poor sap is Corky (Gina Gershon), a woman trying to walk the straight-and-narrow after serving five years for "re-distribution of wealth." She is doing maintenance work for a Chicago apartment building when she meets Violet (Jennifer Tilly), the beautiful, breathy lady living in the apartment next door to the one she is working on. Violet is the kept woman of a low-level mobster named Caesar (Joe Pantoliano), but it seems she also has eyes for Corky, and the feeling is mutual. Violet confides in Corky that she wants to leave Caesar, and hopes to take with her the $2 million Caesar is holding for his bosses while setting him up to take the fall. So Corky hatches a plan to steal the money and force Caesar to run...except that Caesar doesn't react quite according to plan.
The first act of BOUND sticks quite close to the standard film noir formula story line outlined above, complete with femme fatale Violet seducing Corky with drinks and double-entendre, Corky engaging in suspicious second-guessing, and a partnership in crime which seems less than entirely trustworthy. Gershon (SHOWGIRLS), sporting lips so full she seems unable to close her mouth entirely, makes an acceptable stand-in for the usual male dumb lug, with just a touch of Bogart's world-weary cynicism. The sex scene between Gershon and Tilly is utterly gratuitous after the much more effective seduction scene, however, and BOUND begins to raise red flags of turning into pure exploitation when heads begin smashing into toilets and severed fingers begin flying.
I also feared I saw danger signs of BOUND becoming a case of lesbian-chic meets plot-twist-chic once Violet and Corky get their hands on Caesar's money, that it would play itself out with the two women exchanging double-crosses until poetic justice was served. The reason that doesn't happen is that Andy and Larry Wachowski (ASSASSINS) have no intention of letting Caesar be little more than a plot device. As played by Joe Pantoliano, Caesar is a giddy display of sheer survival instinct as he thwarts the carefully-laid plans of Corky and Violet to set him up by taking on the people Violet expected him to run from. Pantoliano has some hilarious moments as he becomes ever more desperate, including a conversation with a corpse which is as comic as it is one-sided, and BOUND begins building merrily tense scene on top of merrily tense scene.
I suppose the thing that makes BOUND particularly satisfying is that it is simply a very good thriller -- suspenseful, unpredictable, well-acted and stylishly directed. On one level, I suppose you could argue that the lesbian angle is unnecessary, and that the Wachowskis include it simply for titillation value, but it is precisely because it is unnecessary that I think it is so noteworthy. BOUND would have been just as effective if Corky had been a man, or if Caesar had been a woman, or if all three main characters had been men. It was not all that long ago that film-makers began talking about "color-blind casting," choosing actors not because their race or ethnicity was intrinsic to the roles but because they were the best actors available for those roles. In BOUND, Gina Gershon makes a sharp little suspense thriller that much more intriguing by being perhaps the first example of "sexuality-blind casting." Here's to the poor saps of the world, whatever their gender.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 gender benders: 8.
Receive Scott Renshaw's reviews directly via email from Marquee! Visit http://www.marquee.com/marquee-mailinglists.html for details. Visit Scott Renshaw's MoviePage http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews