Bound Review: The Wachowskis’ Debut is a Slick and Stylish Noir Classic

   September 26, 2024
bound 1996 movie
Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon in Bound (1996), directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski

Bound Movie Review

Bound is one of the great debut movies ever made, introducing the world to directing duo Lana and Lilly Wachowski. The Wachowskis have made a career of the slick and stylish, tying together high-octane action and violence with silky smooth characters.

Their movies double as both entertaining times at the theater and boundary pushing genre dissections. The Wachowskis are perhaps best known for The Matrix franchise, which would completely redefine the potential of science fiction blockbusters, but before their first foray into the Keanu Reeves-led world, they made a rather contained noir-thriller Bound.

Bound follows Corky (Gina Gershon), a tough female ex-convict working on an apartment renovation in a Chicago building who meets a couple living next door. Caesar (Joe Pantoliano) is a paranoid mobster, while Violet (Jennifer Tilly) is his seductive girlfriend and is immediately attracted to Corky.

Corky and Violet strike up a plan to steal a sum of money from the mob and pin it on Caesar, allowing them to run away and escape the shackles of petty men. Needless to say, their supposedly fool-proof plan goes awry and the resourcefulness of the two women is put to the test to escape this tricky situation.

Bound is stylized beyond belief, instantly becoming one of the defining genre pieces of the 90s and a remarkably lean and engaging thriller. Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly juxtapose each other perfectly. Gershon is the tough-talking dom, while Tilly is the baby-voiced bombshell. Their star personas are shining through in nearly every way here, to the point where you’d wonder if they are satirizing themselves as actresses.

The direction and carefully crafted set of details are about as assured and accomplished as you could expect from a debut picture. There is not a single frame or scene wasted in Bound, which boils and boils until the final act overflows and offers a grisly, blood soaked resolution.

It’s hard to argue the Wachowskis ever made a movie as defining and revelatory as The Matrix, but to offer a film as succinct as Bound right off the bat is a generational accomplishment, and easily one of the best movies of 1996.

Score: 9/10

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