B Plus Movies

I’ve ranted before about how I hate trailers. The people who decide what gets edited into trailers should get a nail hammered into their leg for every spoiler they include and a railroad spike for each minute of footage from the film’s climax.  I’m not sure that people who make misleading DVD cases are any better.

Thankfully, their efforts did not keep me from enjoying the movie Bound.

Bound was done by the Wachowski brothers before they had Keanu Reeves talking about spoons. It’s very stripped down film, most of the story taking place in apartments in the same building. And if you just judged it by the cover, you’d think it was about lesbians bondage porn.

Spoiler alert: It’s not.

Bound starts with Gina Gershon playing an ex-con trying to catch a break and start her life over. She takes a job as a handiwoman in an apartment that turns out to share a wall with the apartment of a member of the Italian mafia. The mafioso’s girlfriend, played by Jennifer Tilly, makes some subtle advances towards Gina Gershon’s character. Turns out the relationship between Tilly and her beau, played by Joe Pantoliano, is bitter and bad. Tilly wants to escape it, Gershon wants to help all they need is the means.

This is where the money comes in. A lot of money. And because of that, it all goes down quick. No pun intended.

There’s a lot to like in this crime drama. Tilly does an excellent job of keeping the audience guessing at her true motives and allegiances. The direction and cinematography works impressively toward establishing a mood of isolation and suspense. The writing keeps you on the edge of your seat, wondering how it’s all going to go and the other actors in the movie give outstanding performances.

And yes, there’s a lesbian sex scene. You’re welcome.

For the sake of balance, I want to say something bad about this movie but I can’t. It’s not life changing by any means but failing to change my perceptions is not a flaw. There’s some violence, some sexuality but the Wachowski’s manage to make it part of the story rather than trying to turn it into the story, the result being that things like the lesbian relationship in the movie become plot points than exploitative stumbling blocks.

All around, this is just a solid film.

Whatever you do though, don’t go look at a trailer for this movie before you see it. The theatrical trailer gave away just about every climactic moment in the movie that involved Tilly or Gershon. If you want to see Bound, do it with no more warning than what you see above.  Rent it, buy it, queue it up on Netflix but walk into it as blind as possible and you’re likely to walk out loving it.

I did and I give it a very, very solid B+.