TALES OF LOHR: "BOUND"

The Wachowskis raise the curtain with a mind-bending alt-erotica ride

When Bound was first unleashed on theaters in 1996, my initial reaction was not a particularly enthusiastic one. Not for any reasons of bigotry, mind you. I was simply still smarting from the sting of the Richard Donner-directed Assassins, the previous year’s hitman thriller that marked the first feature screenwriting credit for Lana and Lilly Wachowski. Starring Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas as rival contract killers, and Julianne Moore as the woman caught between the two of them, Assassins was a dull, dour slog that marked the first time in my long career as a filmgoer that I ever fell asleep in a movie theater. I take some consolation that as much as I disliked Assassins, the Wachowskis apparently liked it even less. Bristling at how heavily their screenplay had been re-written (by Brian Helgeland, soon to share a screenwriting Oscar for his genuinely great adaptation of L.A. Confidential), the siblings unsuccessfully petitioned the Writers Guild to have their names removed from the film altogether. I found all this out far after the fact, however, and at the time, all Bound was to me was a follow-up from the people who wrote that one Stallone movie that literally put me to sleep. What was supposed to be exciting about that?