Where the Truth Lies (Unrated Theatrical Edition)
by Atom Egoyan
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alison Lohman, Colin Firth, David Hayman, Kevin Bacon, Rachel BlanchardDirector: Atom Egoyan
Brand: Sony
Producer: Atom Egoyan
Writer: Atom Egoyan
Producer: Chris Chrisafis
Producer: Colin Leventhal
Producer: Daniel J.B. Taylor
Producer: Donald A. Starr
Writer: Rupert Holmes
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 107 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-02-28
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: THINKFilm
Movie Reviews of Where the Truth Lies (Unrated Theatrical Edition)
Movie Review: Unfairly Underrated Noirish Mystery...
Summary: 5 Stars
On the recommendation of a writer I know, I sat down with friends to screen the unrated theatrical cut of Atom Egoyen's 2005 film, "Where the Truth Lies" on DVD.
Shuttling back and forth between 1957 and 1972-3, "Where the Truth Lies," tells the story of an young reporter, Karen O'Connor, played by Allison Lohman, who has been contracted to "ghost write" the biography of Vince Collins (a restrained Colin Firth), a semi-retired entertainer turned talent-manager, who once was partnered up in a wildly successful night act with fellow performer, Lanny Morris (an excellent Kevin Bacon), who by the 70's has carved out a career as a producer. O'Connor's publisher, pushes Lohman to dig up the truth behind a mysterious and unsolved 1957 murder of a college student that precipitated the break up of Morris and Collins partnership (very loosely based on the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis act) fifteen years earlier.
Watching "Where the Truth Lies," (I've seen it twice) I was surprised. This is a film that had been savaged by almost all of the reviewers from the major US news outlets for being too sordid, sex-soaked, and critically hamstrung by the performance of the Lohman' point of view character. Perhaps I'm a bit jaded, but while the film is loaded with sex scenes (five by my count) and the goings on are a bit sordid (we are talking about the excesses of successful performers in the 1950's and the decadent, drug-addled, "free love" hangover era, of the pre-disco 1970's) none of the scenes are gratuitous (except possibly a quick throwaway visual gag early in the film) and serve a function in the narrative. Moreover I though Lohman was utterly believable in her role as the ambitious young reporter, who is desperately trying to break into the "big time" with a major scoop - though the show really belongs to Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth playing the performers at the height of their fame in the '50's and later on, as respectively a producer and a talent manager in the 70's. The narrative is well-shot and well-structured (long before films like "Momento" Egoyan was apioneer at the practice of using flashbacks and slightly surreal shifts between subjective experience and "objective" reality to create emotional resonance in audience, particularly in his earlier films, "Exotica" and "The Sweet Hereafter") and features the clever use of repeating motifs, particularly visual and musical references to "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass," references that are entirely appropriate to the movie's rather adult themes.
I really don't understand why this film was so throughly panned when it first came out: for what it's worth I recommend it, and it easily bears repeat viewings (i've seen it twice so far). [...] Get the unrated cut. There's no point in seeing a censored version.
Summary of Where the Truth Lies (Unrated Theatrical Edition)
Starring Kevin Bacon (Beauty Shop, Mystic River), Colin Firth (Love Actually, Bridget Jones's Diary) and Alison Lohman (Big Fish, Matchstick Men), Where the Truth Lies is a suspenseful mystery from acclaimed director Atom Egoyan. In the '50s, Vince Collins (Firth) and Lanny Morris (Bacon) are the hottest showbiz duo in America. The combination of Lanny's brash American style and Vince's biting British wit is irresistible, especially to beautiful women. When a beautiful young woman, Maureen (Rachel Blanchard) is found dead in the bathtub of the duo's suite, their glittery world begins to crumble. They have rock solid alibis and are exonerated of any criminal wrongdoing; however, the scandal causes the once inseparable pair to part company. Fifteen years later, Karen O'Connor (Lohman), a young and ambitious journalist, is determined to uncover the secrets of the two men who, coincidentally, touched her life when she was a child. She persuades a publisher to offer a guarded Vince Collins one million dollars to collaborate with her on writing the untold story of his life with Lanny Morris. There is one condition: the truth must be told about the scandal that destroyed the duo. What really happened the night Maureen died? As Karen continues to search for many different truths-the truth about Vince and Lanny, the truth about Maureen's death, and even suppressed truths about herself- she becomes embroiled in a tense and bewildering game of cat-and-mouse.Director Atom Egoyan's 2005 film Where the Truth Lies is laden with nudity, sex, violence, lies, blackmail, betrayal. and really, what more could you want? Other than some genuine tension, a more compelling story, and better acting, that is. In adapting Rupert Holmes' novel, the Cairo-born Egoyan (Ararat, Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter) has taken on a murder mystery with film noir elements that will leave many viewers wondering exactly "whodunit" until the final few scenes; and while that's surely a good thing, the ride itself simply isn't all that scintillating. Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth star as a (Dean) Martin & (Jerry) Lewis-style team whose principal talents seem to consist mainly of pill-popping, soulless sex with a stream of nubile young women, and hosting an annual polio telethon. Fifteen years after their '50s heyday, journalist Karen O'Connor (Alison Lohman), who appeared on the telethon as a child, seeks out the pair to determine why they split up and, not coincidentally, what really happened to the dead girl with whom they had dallied the night before. Bacon is reasonably unctuous as the leering Lanny Morris; but Firth is uninspired as the more elusive Vince Collins, and although Lohman is game, she sometimes seems out of her depth in a role that calls for her to both seduce and be seduced, to manipulate and be manipulated. Egoyan, who also wrote the screenplay, has an eye for odd little details (much is made of Pan Am's first class dinner service, for instance) and an ear for great music (the soundtrack includes tunes by Charles Mingus, Louis Prima, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Funkadelic) and good dialogue ("Having to be a nice guy is the toughest job in the world when you're not"). But the film is curiously tepid; the sex is unconvincing, the mystery lacks a sense of danger, and the resolution is hardly shocking. One wishes that, having dipped into this genre, Egoyan had gone all out and made a film as delightfully sleazy as, say, Basic Instinct. --Sam Graham
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