Bound

Larry & Andy Wachowski, USA, 1996, 108 mins

After the huge success of The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers must rank as Hollywood A-list. If you were one of the lucky few who managed to catch Bound when it briefly came to the cinemas, you'd have known they were the real ready. Gina Gershon (straight from the spectacularly bad Showgirls) is Corky, just out of jail after five years, who has a job fixing up an apartment; the apartment next door to Violet (Jennifer Tilly), and her Mafiosi boyfriend Caesar (Joe Pantoliano). Violet appears to be a straightforward mob moll, good looking but far from clever. When she meets Corky, however, things rapidly get very complicated, and before you can say ménage à trois, the two women are conspiring to steal two million dollars of the mob's money from Caesar, whilst pointing the blame at someone else. What could possibly go wrong?

The movie belongs to Gershon and Tilly, the pair sharing a palpable chemistry. The other characters never really get a chance to do very much, and after we've all got used to Scorsese’s vision of what mobsters should be like (Goodfellas, Casino) the ones in Bound seem a bit bland. The Wachowskis have combined a few classic movie genres with a whole load of stylistic seasoning and given everything a good stir, so much so that it's hard to believe that this is their first film. There are parts that hint at the visual `flomo' sequences used to such great effect in The Matrix, but there are so many other flourishes that it's as if somebody lent them a camera and they're desperate to see what it can do before they have to give it back. The way they engineer everything in the film with such precision echoes some of the Coen brothers' work; in particular, there are traces of their debut Blood Simple to be found in Bound. Can the Wachowskis manage to make as many movies as the Coens without running out of ideas? Let's hope so!

Review by Jonathan M. Caryl
Taken from EUFS Programe Autumn 1999