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Rating:  - Ambitious mess but entertaining
Atom Egoyan crams a lot into this film. There's a lot to like--some great performances, especially that of Kevin Bacon---some interesting flashbacks to the good old/bad old days of gang owned night clubs in the 50's when the law looked the other way, more often than not. The story is interesting and holds your attention. There's a lot of sex thrown in, male/female, female/female, threesomes, male/male...something for everyone.
It's smart as all of his films are. It is a who dunnit and there are all the necessary details you have to follow--the name change, the complicated negotiations with the publishers, the location of the manuscripts, etc. that I found a little confusing at times. I would have preferred more of a character study of the show biz couple. It's an interesting story and the human side of it was far more compelling than the picky details of who mailed the manuscript or moved the note stuff.
It was definitely entertaining but I had the feeling that Egoyan bit off more than he could really master. The sex scenes, for example, seemed a little gratuitous and one has to wonder why he chooses blonds for all his heroines---sort of like Hitchock's pale heroines except these show a lot more skin.
Maybe if he had decided to do a traditional Hollywood type film noir he could have stuck with the slick cold-bloodedness. But he threw in some sentimental stuff with the mother of the murdered girl fondling the tree that grew out of where her ashes were scattered, that just didn't fit with the tone of the rest of the film. There were a few moments of what seemed like genuine feeling between the Bacon and the Lohman characters but they were eclipsed by all the sensational stuff. I think Egoyan was enamored of a lot of the glamor of the subject matter, as well as the pale female bodies and sort of indulged in it. I hope he continues to make films and that he matures into a better film maker in coming years.
The biggest mistake was casting Allison Lohman as the reporter. She is lovely but looks far too much like the girl-next-door trying to get a story for the school paper than the hyper smart, super gutsy, ambitious character she's playing.
I have to wonder how they got away with portraying a comedy team so closely resembling Martin and Lewis. As another reviewer said, they must have had a lot of good lawyers on hand.
All in all, it's worth watching, if, for nothing else, the terrific acting job by Kevin Bacon.
Rating:  - Not Everyone Gets It
Who should you believe about "Where the Truth Lies"? Those who hated it because it was yet another strange Atom Egoyan film, those who hated it because it wasn't as strange as other Atom Egoyan films, or those who liked it because it actually is Egoyan's strangest film?
A fourth group are those who hated it because the adaptation didn't do justice to Rupert Holmes' 2003 source novel, which was not just affecting but extremely funny. The thing to understand is that none of Egoyan's mainstream films ("Exotica", "The Sweet Hereafter", and now "Where the Truth Lies") contain much in the way of humor. That is because Egoyan's interest is allegorical exploration of our internal misery; a topic that just doesn't go very well with humor, despite the fine line between comedy and tragedy. So he stripped the novel's funny stuff out during the adaptation process.
As John Ford and Robert Altman kept a regular ensembles of actors, Egoyan keeps an ensemble of themes that permeate his films. So in all three films there is a "substitution" theme, a "free will vs destiny" theme, a "looking forward" theme (parent's who have lost their children), and a "things and people are not what they appear" theme.
In this regard "Where the Truth Lies" is a bit more like "The Sweet Hereafter" than "Exotica". In both the substitution theme is symbolically shown by the physical similarity between the three young actresses. Alison Lohman (Karen), Rachel Blanchard (Maureen), and Kristen Adams (Alice) take the place of Sarah Polley (Nichole), Caerthan Banks (Zoe), and Stephanie Morgenstern (Allison).
All three films also use a non-linear storytelling technique with frequent flashbacks. Egoyan likes to elliptically uncover the story and all three films circle around slowly peeling off layers of their stories.
For its film noir background story "Where the Truth Lies" flashes back to a 1950s Martin and Lewis comedy team. Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth) are a popular song-dance-unfunny repartee duo, hosting telethons, headlining nightclubs, and maintaining an image as doers of good deeds. But behind the façade they are engaging in nonstop Lindsay Lohen style antics.
The current story (set 20 years later) is about a young journalist named Karen (Lohman) who is working with Vince on his tell-all autobiography. She becomes focused on a murder mystery involving the duo and a college student named Maureen. The film is told from Karen's point of view and the viewer learns background details at the same time they are disclosed to Karen. We also learn that Karen has a past association with the duo, a good deed that changed her life and forever made them her heroes. After the death of her father they have become her substitutes for him.
Bacon and Firth are excellent in the contemporary scenes but a bit weak in the flashback stuff. This could very well be Egoyan's uncertain direction or his screenplay.
Lohman, whose specialty is playing characters 10 years her junior (affectless teenagers in "Matchstick Men" and "White Oleander" - an overwrought teenager in "Flicka") gets to go something different and act her age. Karen is the allegorical element, the character undergoing change, and the narrator. Most of this must be conveyed nonverbally because on the surface she continues to maintain the illusion of the distanced journalist. I think it is an amazing performance although Egoyen's stamp is so strongly on it that he has to get some of the credit, or the blame from those who do not grasp why he wanted the character to look and to be played in this way.
Egoyan had an unusually large budget for this film and he put it to good use on the production design. The sets and costumes provide all the right visual cues to keep you oriented as you move between the 50's and the 70's. But some of this stuff, such as an expensive looking recreation of the Newark airport, seem inserted as window dressing rather than for substantive reasons.
There are two great surreal "Alice and Wonderland" sequences, one of which even incorporates the "White Rabbit" song. Karen's emotional journey has a lot of Alice parallels, at least the more unpleasant aspects of Wonderland.
The film reminded me a lot of "The Swimmer" although the ending is not quite that devastating.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
Rating:  - Good Actors shame about the actress
Should of given it 2 stars really one for each for Firth and Bacon even showing up on set till the film was completed.I found Firth and Bacon where excellent in this movie. Even if the story is a bit slow. I do believe they where a bit wasted in it.Bacon and Firth usually find much better parts. Alison Lohman I am unfamilliar with.Maybe she works in tv I just don't know.
She seems like a bit of a B or C class actress and a bit cheesy and weak. It is watchable. But I am glad I bought a used copy and wish I would of just caught it on the tv. Firth usually picks more interesting roles that this. Maybe he was just having a bad day or was trying not to be tight casted.
Rating: - As the Decades Pass
Interesting adaptation of songwriter Rupert Holmes' celebrated thriller is no masterpiece, but it's continually involving and takes the career of Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan to places he's never been before. While his bid for mainstream commercial success may have stiffed at the box office, on DVD the movie may have a new life as people start watching a picture that will reward them for their patience. Anyone adapting Holmes' novel would first off have been challenged by its timeline, for the two main male characters must age dramatically so you have to hire actors who might clean up enough to look sort of young in the earlier scenes, and not too vain to forgo aging makeup for the present-day scenes. Bacon and Firth do well, though Firth's aging makeup makes him look totally gross, while Kevin Bacon looks more or less the same except with rooster-red Rod Stewart hair, giving him a strange resemblance to Gary Oldman playing Sid Vicious in SID AND NANCY. But why on earth hire Alison Lohman to play O'Connor? (We remember in the book how we never find out O'Connor's first name, just her first initial. Here that game is sacrificed right away in the service of naturalism.) O'Connor's supposed to be young, but not that young; she's old enough to have established herself as an up and coming name in "New Journalism," while Alison Lohman still looks like she's being passed around from foster family to foster family in WHITE OLEANDER. She doesn't seem to have the journalistic savvy O'Connor is said to have had before falling for Lanny Morris, so that when she throws away her objectivity it hardly seems shocking any more, she's just doing what any lovestruck teen might do.
If you can't figure out who committed the murder within forty-five minutes into the picture, it's because you, poor thing, have never seen any movies. Here's what you should do, don't start with this one, try RASHOMON or CITIZEN KANE or WINTER LIGHT, but after those chart topper you might try this one again. Egoyan's trademark suburban acuity, and his mastery of pathos and atmosphere, have rarely been so exercised. On the DVD there's an unusual featurette on the making of WHERE THE TRUTH LIES, that is so not your ordinary "Making Of" featurette, that it should get some sort of award for "most moody."
Rating: - very, very good
After reading all the reviews for this movie, I was not sure I really wanted to see it, even though I am a insatiable Colin Firth fan and cannot get enough of him. But I decided to risk it, and I am SO very glad that I did! This movie was so good! It was a very intriguing story, great acting, it held my rapt interest from beginning to end. I am not a huge Kevin Bacon fan, but he was incredible in this part, and, I may have to further investigate other things he has done. And of course, as usual, Colin Firth is extraordinary. The only negative thing I have to say is that the part of Karen O'Connor could have been better cast, I felt like Alison Lohman was playing a part in a school play, yeah, she's beautiful, but not up to the part of the journalist she played. That was a bit disappointing, but not disappointing enough for me to dislike this film. When I got the dvd and saw that it have been given "two thumbs up" by Ebert and Roeper, I knew I had a winner, as I rarely disagree with Roger Ebert. Its a great film, high underrated, IMHO.
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