With very little effort you could visualize this on the screen of some neighborhood theater -- The Ritz or the Bijou or the Mayfair -- in, say, 1949. Only then it would be in black and white. The credits take about 90 seconds to unroll. It stars people like Edmond O'Brian and Adele Jergens and Marie Windsor and Ted DeCorsia. It's not called "Bound," though. I'm having a little trouble putting that together. It's called something more like "The Big Con" or Edge of Darkness" or "Where Danger Lives." "Bound" is a bit too suggestive even for 1949.
"Bound" is a B movie. The script is pretty elementary, the film has no bankable stars, everybody double-crosses everybody else, and it's cheaply made. But it's updated through the direction, which gives us not just some hood holding a snub-nosed .38 at his hip and shooting someone once. Instead, the hood holds his big pistol sideways and at eye level. Okay, this makes no sense. If you're going to hold it high enough to take aim, why hold the weapon sideways? The answer, I guess, is that that's how it's done in modern thrillers. Frankly, I blame Bruce Willis for this. He was the first to use this self-defeating convention on screen, that I know of, in "Die Hard." It's updated too in that the director has more freedom. So, for instance, the camera can climb up an apartment wall and then OVER the top into the apartment next door.
And, people aren't usually shot just once but several times. Sometimes many times. Bullet holes and blood all over the place. And when shot, the victim doesn't simply grasp his belly and grimace, then twirl around and crumple to the floor. He throws out his arms, slips around on a floor covered with bone-white latex interior paint, dripping blood in artsy patterns onto the slickness. It could be grand opera, except that sometimes the victim has time enough, though bullet-riddled, to raise his finger as if lecturing the shooter and make some absurd wisecrack -- "Please don't shoot," in this case.
And it's updated also because the two lovers take off with the boodle to live happily ever after, we guess. In 1949 the lovers would have been maybe Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan. Here the lovers are two lesbians. (Some nice, but not hot sex between them is thrown in for the voyeurs.) And although they are both pre-verts and at least one of them has murdered somebody in cold blood, the getaway vehicle in the final scene doesn't plunge off a cliff, as it would have had to in 1949. What I mean is, did Hannibal Lecter die at the end of "Silence of the Lambs"? No -- and he ATE people. Times have changed.
Gina Gershon with her protruding lips could pass for an ex inmate. Jennifer Tilly's voice is a slow, wispy croak and she comes across as the dark side of the moon of Melanie Griffith. The Italian mobsters weren't too impressive, but Joe Pantoliano was great as usual. He can play almost anything. Here he covers his Jersey City accent with a reasonably authentic Chicago sound, although perhaps nobody but Pantoliano would catch it, or would care if they did.
Interesting minor flick, worth watching.
"Bound" is a B movie. The script is pretty elementary, the film has no bankable stars, everybody double-crosses everybody else, and it's cheaply made. But it's updated through the direction, which gives us not just some hood holding a snub-nosed .38 at his hip and shooting someone once. Instead, the hood holds his big pistol sideways and at eye level. Okay, this makes no sense. If you're going to hold it high enough to take aim, why hold the weapon sideways? The answer, I guess, is that that's how it's done in modern thrillers. Frankly, I blame Bruce Willis for this. He was the first to use this self-defeating convention on screen, that I know of, in "Die Hard." It's updated too in that the director has more freedom. So, for instance, the camera can climb up an apartment wall and then OVER the top into the apartment next door.
And, people aren't usually shot just once but several times. Sometimes many times. Bullet holes and blood all over the place. And when shot, the victim doesn't simply grasp his belly and grimace, then twirl around and crumple to the floor. He throws out his arms, slips around on a floor covered with bone-white latex interior paint, dripping blood in artsy patterns onto the slickness. It could be grand opera, except that sometimes the victim has time enough, though bullet-riddled, to raise his finger as if lecturing the shooter and make some absurd wisecrack -- "Please don't shoot," in this case.
And it's updated also because the two lovers take off with the boodle to live happily ever after, we guess. In 1949 the lovers would have been maybe Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan. Here the lovers are two lesbians. (Some nice, but not hot sex between them is thrown in for the voyeurs.) And although they are both pre-verts and at least one of them has murdered somebody in cold blood, the getaway vehicle in the final scene doesn't plunge off a cliff, as it would have had to in 1949. What I mean is, did Hannibal Lecter die at the end of "Silence of the Lambs"? No -- and he ATE people. Times have changed.
Gina Gershon with her protruding lips could pass for an ex inmate. Jennifer Tilly's voice is a slow, wispy croak and she comes across as the dark side of the moon of Melanie Griffith. The Italian mobsters weren't too impressive, but Joe Pantoliano was great as usual. He can play almost anything. Here he covers his Jersey City accent with a reasonably authentic Chicago sound, although perhaps nobody but Pantoliano would catch it, or would care if they did.
Interesting minor flick, worth watching.