Main cast: Camila Mendes (Katie Franklin), Jessie T Usher (Adam Kettner), Jamie Chung (Julia Byron-Kim), Cam Gigandet (Mickey Hayden), Sasha Alexander (Detective Chesler), and Elliott Gould (Leonard Wellesley)
Director: Michael Scott
Katie Franklin and Adam Kettner are a happily married couple, or rather, as happy as a financially strapped husband and wife can be. The real story begins when Katie finds work as the assistant of an elderly man, Leonard Wellesley, helping him keep things in order and making sure that he takes his meds, that kind of thing. Leonard learns of her mounting pile of unpaid bills and offers her the money to pay those bills, but our noble heroine insists that she can’t take the money. On the other hand, she’d be happy if he would hire Adam as the gardener. Our heroine is very goody-goody like that, and viewers have better get used to it or else they would kick the TV screen with extreme prejudice later on.
When Leonard dies and they find a bag full of cash, Adam wants to keep the money for themselves while Katie is all about being nice and giving up the money to the authorities. She agrees with her husband, though, because that’s also another pattern of behavior from Katie. She will protest that something is bad, but goes along anyway with Adam when he decides to do it anyway. Again, get used to it or kick the TV hard later on.
Later, they learn that Leonard has left all his money and properties to Katie. Adam is ecstatic. No more money problems, woo-hoo! Katie however—yes, you guess it—is all oh no, oh no, but when Adam says oh yes, oh yes, she goes along anyway. Then, they discover a dead body in the house with diamonds on the body. Guess what Adam wants, guess what Katie says, and guess whether she stands her ground or goes along with her husband regardless of her own stance.
The whole thing spirals down into a mess of third-rate crime drama, as a sleazy real estate agent Hayden begins stalking them after Katie refuses to sell the house to him—seriously, I guess our heroine must really love being poor and in debts; that or she is a freaking imbecile because oh my god indeed—and Adam may also be attempting to double-cross the wife and flee with the money and all. I don’t blame Adam should that turn out to be the case, really, because his wife is a passive, whiny, indecisive moron.
Dangerous Lies is not to be mistaken for a remake of the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name. It’s not even close to being a third-rate Hitchcock film, as there is hardly any successful effort in this movie to build up a genuine sense of tension or suspense. The twists and turns are at least plausible, although I can see the big twist coming from a mile away, especially since there are so few characters in this movie, and the movie prefers to play it safe and keep things as predictable as possible. Maybe they don’t want the audience to be really shocked or surprised for some reason.
It also doesn’t help that the lead female character doesn’t do anything. She gets into all kinds of situation because of the actions of Adam and other people around her. She doesn’t do anything to help herself, as if she secretly wanted to be bankrupt for the rest of her life for some heathen reason. Maybe a big bag of money hit her in the head when she was a child and she had been traumatized by the sight of money ever since. At any rate, it is hard to root for a heroine who is just there, reacting to situations in ways that are hard to relate to. Even at the very end, when she can certainly do so without having the cops or villains going after her, she still doesn’t even try to look for some missing goodies stashed around the house. Katie doesn’t seem to have any human wants, desires, or ambitions at all. She’s just some thing in this movie that happens to stay alive until the very end because she doesn’t do freaking anything.
Anyway, this is definitely one of those movies shot on cheap and as quickly as possible to be sold to Netflix as slot fillers.
