Trouble Bound

Rating

Director

Jeffrey Reiner

Screenplay

Darrell Fetty, Francis Delia

Length

1h 30m

Starring

Michael Madsen, Patricia Arquette, Sal Jenco, Darren Epton, Gregory Sporleder, Paul Ben-Victor, Billy Bob Thornton, Rustam Branaman, Florence Stanley, Seymour Cassel

MPAA Rating

R

Review

PREFACE:
In the early 2000s, I was writing reviews for an outfit called Apollo Guide Reviews. That website has since been closed down.

Attempting to reconstruct those reviews has been an exercise in frustration. Having sent them to Apollo Guide via email on a server I no longer have access to (and which probably doesn’t have records going back that far), my only option was to dig through The Wayback Machine to see if I could find them there. Unfortunately, while I found a number of reviews, a handful of them have disappeared into the ether. At this point, almost two decades later, it is rather unlikely that I will find them again.

Luckily, I was able to locate my original review of this particular film. Please note that I was not doing my own editing at the time, Apollo Guide was. As such, there may be more than your standard number of grammatical and spelling errors in this review. In an attempt to preserve what my style had been like back then, I am not re-editing these reviews, which are presented as-is.

REVIEW:
In Trouble Bound, an ex-con falls in love with a Mafia daughter on a road trip that turns into a deadly pursuit of love and money.

Harry Talbot (Michael Madsen) just got out of prison and hopes to lead a straight life. During a high stakes poker game, Harry comes out with a large sum of money and the keys to the car of one of the other players. He decides it’s time to leave Nevada and his newfound wealth will help him get there. He doesn’t realize that the reason he won the car is because it is the final resting-place of a dead body, whose trunk residence remains unknown until half way through the film. Meanwhile, Kit Califano (Patricia Arquette), granddaughter of a Mafia matron (Florence Stanley), has been caught attempting to kill her leading assassin Santino (Seymour Cassel). She and her three bumbling captors, led by Kit’s brother, end up at a roadside diner alongside Harry, where she arranges to cause a disturbance to allow her escape. When she attempts to break into Harry’s car, he puts a stop to it and offers to give her a ride toward her destination.

The chase begins, as Granny wants Kit back, the originators of the dead body in the trunk want the deceased’s coat back and Santino wants to kill Kit. The three parties haphazardly attempt to capture Harry and Kit. The two begin to fall in love, despite their frequent arguments, and together they must try to survive all these encounters long enough to fully experience one another.

Trouble Bound is an exercise in conventional filmmaking. Director Jeffrey Reiner gives us nothing exceptional and the screenplay by Darrell Fetty and Francis Delia is nothing more than your standard romantic chase movie with Mafia interests. Even the performances feel stale. Madsen is plain and unemotional, like a recently released convict might be, but his act is static and never changes from beginning to end. Arquette gives another crazy performance that never escalates beyond two dimensions. Even Florence Stanley, who was absolutely wonderful on Night Court, seems staid and unenergetic. Cassel, another long-time actor, also fails to yield a terrific performance.

Overall, Trouble Bound is a slow, unoriginal and problematic movie that leads the audience on a lengthy circus sideshow that generates no excitement or fun. Some of the dialogue is astute and humorous, but in the end, it’s little more than a glorified mob movie blended with a traditional chase film.

Review Written

May 22, 2003