Bound by Lies

Max Garrett (Stephen Baldwin) is a cop on a seriously thin rope. Garrett returns from a six month suspension t0 robbery / homicide only to get involved in a homicide case involving a sexy artist (Kirsty Swanson), who may be more than just an innocent witness. Garrett uncovers kinkiness that may well put his life and family in danger.

"Bound by Lies" is a simple straight-to-video police thriller. Full of clichés and C-list stars. Not to bad, about the equivalent of a film you see on late night cable. Good looking stars sprinkled with a little smut with a better than usual polished look to it. The plot is standard and the acting is fair but at least the original Buffy is in it.

What is acting? Will you find it here? Is it too harsh judging the people involved in this, because of the script/direction? Are any of the twists worth your while? The answers to those question can only be given by yourself. And while the Baldwin involved in this, has made a name in movies like this, the question is, if you have the time and strength to watch this.

It's not that the characters are despicable from the get go. But while the movie progresses and relationships get established you do wonder, why you're still watching this. Now if you meant to watch this, because it promises sizzling erotic and/or nudity, you can also forget about that. While the main actress might appeal to many (men and women respectively), her character is all over the place and does not help the viewer understand what the other characters are going through because of her ... Not recommendable ...

There are two classes of people who will love this film - Stephen Baldwin fans and Gladys Jimenez fans. All others are bound to be bored.

Baldwin plays a cop (Max Garrett) who is dangerously close to being kicked out. He is assigned to watch Laura (Kristy Swanson) and protect her from a crazed killer. You'll know who the killer is in the first five minutes, so there are only two questions to be answered: will the killer get Laura, and will Baldwin get Swanson, who continues to remain nudity-free after 55 films.

Well, there is a third question that begs to be answered: why the heck would Garrett want Swanson when he has Gladys Jimenez at home? She has no problems showing us what made her famous in films like Blowback and Secrets of a Chambermaid. She gave that up to become a soap star, but we get another view in this film.

We know that Garrett is not gay like we suspect Dr. Doolittle is, but he certainly has his priorities crossed. Get home, jerk, Jimenez is waiting!

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-

This clunker-stinker was just on ShowTime Too ... thank goodness I was actually working on the computer! Just hearing the insipid banter, throughout this waste of celluloid, was enough to make me actually BEG my wife to turn it off. She replied: (many times) "I can't turn away from this train-wreck!" And, yes, as noted by another poor reviewer who lost two hours of his life; even a bloated Kristy Swanson couldn't rescue this film version of nails on a blackboard. And as for Baldwin ... I don't think any explanation is needed? I would suggest that two hours of watching the Weather Channel is time better spent; you might actually catch a plot line and the ending will be far better!