Bound

The Wachowski brothers have drawn obvious comparisons with the Coen brothers. Both sets of brothers co-write and co-direct and they both are responsible for some of the best film noirs of the past few years. If anything Bound is a better debut feature than Blood Simple was in 1983.

It has all the components of a classic film noir: a sultry femme fatale, a suitcase full of money, the plan that goes wrong...but with one unique difference: the ex-con who gets drawn into the web of intrigue by the femme fatale is a woman. Gina Gershon is the said ex-con, Corky, and Jennifer Tilly is Violet, the bored gangster’s moll whose husband, Caesar (Joe Pantoliano), has to literally launder over $2 million. Together Corky and Violet devise a plan to relieve Caesar of the cash and place all the blame, and the consequent wrath of the mob, on him. However, in true film noir style the plan goes disastrously wrong as Caesar fails to act as predicted and devises a plan of his own. Things progressively go from bad to worse as additional problems surface for Caesar, Corky and Violet forcing them to continually adapt.

Despite a few dodgy performances from the leads, Bound must surely qualify as one of the best written film noirs in recent years. Although shot in colour the brothers, nevertheless, have limited the number of onscreen colours and this combined with atmospheric lighting helps to create a very stylish, noirish mood. The style doesn’t stop there though. Despite this being the first film the brothers have directed they have managed to show a keen eye for style and suspense with some nice individual touches. In particular, they have come up with some highly original shots, notably someone getting gunned down whilst standing in a pool of white paint. However, style alone is not sufficient to make a film, cf: Desperado, content is also important. Fortunately, the brothers also know how to write and have created a superbly written film with plenty of black humour. Some scenes in particular have three or four layers of complexity which could so easily have degenerated into farce if not for very careful plotting and scripting, and the first few scenes have a carefully judged tackiness juxtaposed against the complexity and seriousness of the later scenes.

Thus, The Wachowski brothers certainly deserve to be considered in the same sentence as the Coen brothers with this superbly crafted and well written blackly humerous film noir. spook