Dangerous Lies
DANGEROUS LIES - NETFLIXDangerous Lies opens on a fairly strong note, as the viewer is introduced to Katie (played by Camila Mendes of Riverdale) and her husband Adam (Jessie T. Usher) on the night that Katie’s place of work is caught up in an armed robbery, one that Adam manages to put a stop to. Cut to four months later – Katie and Adam face financial struggles, with Adam unemployed and Katie taking up a job as a carer for Leonard (Elliott Gould), a wealthy man with seemingly no family and friends to speak of. Upon arriving at the house for a day of work, Katie discovers that Leonard has passed while she and Adam stumble across one hundred thousand dollars in cash, immediately raising the suspicion of Detective Chesler (Sasha Alexander).
The set-up is incredibly similar to the excellent Knives Out, almost dubiously so. Yet where that film succeeded in creating a cast of interesting characters all with possible motives, Dangerous Lies fails to keep some of its secrets from being painfully obvious to the viewer. Despite this, the film does manage to be engaging for the most part. The plot takes several twists and turns, almost to the point of forcing the narrative to be more convoluted than it ought to be, trying to cram as many curveballs in as it possibly can. Specifically introducing a plot around diamonds and plenty of double-crossing to leave even the most focused viewer bewildered at points.
The cast here does an okay job with what they are given to work with; Mendes is the standout as the lead and manages to deliver most of the dialogue with a sense of believability. Despite her relationship with Adam feeling grounded, the performance from Jessie T. Usher is a tad more inconsistent with many of the films unintended laugh out loud moments coming from him.
The connection between the film and the successful NETFLIX series Riverdale go further than the film’s lead, with Ronald Richard as cinematographer bringing a similar aesthetic created on Riverdale to the film. This allows the feature to stand out from similar counterparts, perhaps even placing itself above most of the work that Director Michael Scott has directed previously, with a filmography mostly consisting of Christmas TV-Movies. However, the film is still astonishingly generic, feeling not too dissimilar to a Hallmark film only with a higher budget and stronger visual direction. The writing, by David Golden, ranges from 'so bad it's good' level of dialogue to serviceable exposition, especially towards the end of the narrative as the loose ends are quickly strung together in an effort to tie it all up.
Dangerous Lies has enough twists and turns to keep most viewers engaged throughout its runtime. However, the film never manages to escape its incredibly generic storytelling, resulting in a serviceable yet forgettable film.
