Simply Perfect

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

If this direct-to-DVD crime thriller had an appropriate level of sex and violence, it might have been almost tolerable. Don't get me wrong. Bound by Lies was never going to be good in any meaningful sense of the word, but it could have been an adequate slice of low brow entertainment. After cramming a car chase, gun fight, explosion and furtive glimpse of breasts into the first 5 minutes of the movie, however, the rest is nothing but a bunch of actors stumbling through an inane plot while mouthing even more inane dialog. There's no nudity, no action, no comedy, no drama. It just slowly deflates like an ugly party balloon.Max Garrett (Stephen Baldwin) is a detective just back from suspension after a fiasco where he got a suspect killed and a witness disappeared. The movie opens with Max being interrogated about the disaster, interspersed with flashbacks to what happened. Max turns in his gun and badge for a 6 month suspension, then the story jumps forward to Max back on the force and none of the stuff that happened at the beginning has anything to do with the rest of the film. The witness who disappeared does not come back or anything like that.The reason Bound By Lies begins this way is obviously because someone realized the rest of the movie was duller than the proverbial dishwater and threw in an explosive prologue to try and disguise that for as long as possible. After that reasonably exciting opening, we see Max and his wife Diana (Gladys Jimenez) and get a brief look at her boobs. Then I watched the film for another half hour, waiting for more sex and violence, before it dawned on my that there wasn't going to be any. So, while I'll tip my cap to these filmmakers for tricking me, I'd also like to put my boot in their ass for wasting my time and attention.Getting back to the narrative, Max is called out to a dead body in an alley and meets his new partner, Lieutenant Eddie Fulton (Charles Malik Whitfield). Eddie thinks it's an open and shut case but Max wants to investigate and winds up interviewing Laura Cross (Kristy Swanson), an artist who lives in a building off the alley and takes bondage photographs. Kristy Swanson does not get naked in this movie. Randi (Natassia Malthe) is Laura's lesbian assistant. Natassia Malthe does not get naked in this movie. I'm emphasizing that to make sure you don't waste your time with this thing.Anyway, at first Max suspects Laura of being a killer, then it turns out her building's super (Kevin Chamberlin) is the killer and Max has to guard Laura while the super is on the loose. Max discovers an architecturally dubious attic where he can look through peepholes into Laura's loft. An art critic gets killed. Max and Laura fall in love. The super kidnaps Max's wife, leading to a rooftop showdown where the super ties himself to Laura with 50 feet of wire. No, the 50 feet of wire thing doesn't make any sense in the film, either. And to repeat, there's no nudity or violence while any of that is going on.The performances of Swanson, Stephen Baldwin and the rest of the cast are perfectly acceptable for this sort of thing. The direction of Valerie Landsburg is also perfectly acceptable for this sort of thing. The overpowering problem is that this sort of thing needs to have, and usually does have, a goodly portion of sex and violence. People taking off their clothes. People getting punched or shot or set on fire. Stuff getting blow'd up real nice. And there's none of that in Bound by Lies after the fraudulent first five minutes.This movie isn't aggressively horrible, but it is without any redeeming value. If you want to see Swanson and Baldwin in a film that succeeds at being an adequate slice of low brow entertainment, go rent Zebra Lounge. Do not spend any of you precious moments on this nonsense.

After a suspension of six months for disrespect to the chain of command in the police force, detective Max Garrett (Stephen Baldwin) is assigned to work with Lieutenant Eddie Fulton (Charles Malik Whitfield) in a murder case in another precinct. Both have the mission of protecting the photographer Laura Cross (Kristy Swanson) from the prime suspect of the crime, the super Gus Boyle (Kevin Chamberlin). Max is having troubles in his marriage with his wife Diana (Gladys Jimenez), who misses him, and the proximity with the gorgeous and seductive Laura is deeply affecting him."Betrayed" is a clear rip-off of Ridley Scott's underrated masterpiece "Someone to Watch Over Me" (1987). In both movies, there is a married detective assigned to protect a beautiful woman and falling for her. Even the situation where the wife is kidnapped by the criminal is identical. The character Max Garret is awfully developed by the weak Stephen Baldwin, and in the end worth to watch this movie only because of the beauty of thirty-nine years old Kristy Swanson, the original Buffy and the teenager Samantha of the unforgettable "Deadly Friend" and still extremely beautiful. It also calls the attention the number of different worldwide titles this forgettable movie has ("Betrayed", "Bound by Lies", "The Long Dark Kiss", "Os Mistérios de Laura Cross" ). My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Os Mistérios de Laura Cross" ("The Mysteries of Laura Cross")

There isn't much to say about this C-Grade "thriller" really. Released as "Betrayed" in New Zealand, the DVD cover which is a homage to "Basic Instinct" is somewhat misleading, for while "Basic Instinct" was no masterpiece, it wasn't as terrible as this film. The plot is very weak, the settings plastic, the score terrible and the dialogue cheesy. The leads, Stephen Baldwin and Kristy Swanson are just going through the motions, though they do hold the film together, and Swanson looks very healthy. The rest of the cast are appalling, in particular the actors that play Baldwin's wife and fellow detective. So unless you want to watch C-Grade "thrillers" then don't actively seek out this film.

In this strictly paint-by-numbers direct to video thriller, Detective Max Garret (Stephen Baldwin) is assigned to protect Laura Cross (Kristy 'I STILL refuse to get nude' Swanson). Of course even though he's married to a stunning women, he feels chemistry with Laura and vice versa. It's not really that interesting when red herrings are thrown at the viewer AFTER you know who the killer is. This film was tedious to sit through and extremely uninvolving. All the actors were just going through the paces. When i found out one of the writers was responsible for the dreck known as "Naked Lies" it all clicked into place. No wonder the film was so bad. It's like a Skinamax erotic thriller WITHOUT the sex (there IS one scene but it's VERY tame) IE. totally worthless.Eye Candy: Gladys Jimenez gets topless, but her scenes in "Blowback" were better My Grade: D-