“Dangerous Lies” is a Netflix movie released on April 30, 2020. Written by David Golden, directed by Michael Scott and produced by Margaret H. Huddleston and Stephanie Slack, the movie stars Camila Mendes as Katie Franklin the protagonist and Jessie T. Usher her husband, Adam. They are a young couple facing financial troubles, perhaps more than their share of the trouble. Katie works for an old man, Mr. Leonard Wellesley played by Elliott Gould, as his attendant in his home.
The need for money sees Katie push the boundary and talks to her old man Wellesley about her husband. Adam begins to work in the mansion as a gardener then the old man dies and a chain of events breaks out which sees Adam become stranger and stranger until he is now unrecognized by his wife.
Dangerous Lies Review: The criminal within
The movie “Dangerous Lies” answers the question, is there a criminal in every one waiting for the right situations to break out. On the surface, Adam is not a criminal. He is a good man, broke, and trying to make ends meet legally. More than that, he is a sterling citizen as he once intervenes in a robbery and disarms the robber: his name is mentioned in the news.
But after Wellesley dies, Adam becomes curious and decides to nose around. He finds a fortune of scores of dollar notes in a box. The next problem is whether to report to the police or not. They decide to buy time. The money looms so much in his heart that he returns to the house to count the money. They eventually take the money out and deposit it in a safe. Adam begins to take the money without his wife’s knowledge, he begins to second-guess the police, to scheme, he begins to break the law.
The whole drama is made more complicated by the presence of Mickey Hayden played by Cam Gigandet. He claims to be a real estate agent but he is a criminal whose record runs deep. He goes as far as to commit murder and forgery in order to get the mansion. It turns out it isn’t about the house. There is a case of diamonds somewhere and a whole lot of people are interested in it.
By the time, the film hits the climax, as Detective Chesler played by Sasha Alexander begins to close in on the mansion and tying loosed ends, Adam is a total stranger, far from the man Katie used to know and used to love, revealing that there has always been two Adams – the Adam Katie knows and loves as a poor man and the Adam that meets fortune and decides to cross oceans and climb mountains to possess it.
Would you call Dangerous Lies a good movie?
Normally, the question I would have asked is, how would you rate Dangerous Lies? but I won’t because I suspect you might be too harsh or too kind on the film. The movie is a thriller and murder mystery. Considering the time we are in, with the pandemic raging, there is a tendency to show more understanding of films like these. There is also the fact that the frustrations in the world would have shortened your fuse and you won’t find the film any fun.
But I like the film. I have watched a handful of terrible Netflix movies so I came to this movie with a big suspicion, expecting the film to be bad; but it wasn’t. You can see that the actors are making genuine efforts to make sense of a poorly written, predictable script. The film got me invested emotionally. I cared for Katie and Adam and was genuinely interested in their progress. I wanted them to be happy.
So at the end of the movie, I was ready to forgive the average dialogue, the lack of depth in the plot, and the cheap verbal resolution at the end of the movie. It all begins with the fact that I didn’t come to “Dangerous Lies” expecting to watch a “Jojo Rabbit” or “Just Mercy“. I came with the bar very low, therefore their efforts struck me as good. No, “Dangerous Lies” is not a great movie. It is a good movie. I know there are some who would argue against this but no one will say, given the circumstances, that it is not good enough.
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