Initial release: January 9, 2015
Director: Jared Cohn
Production company: The Asylum
Length: 1hr 31 min.
Genre: Drama, Thriller.
Bound is a 2015 American erotic romantic drama film written and directed by Jared Cohn and starring Charisma Carpenter and Daniel Baldwin. Produced by The Asylum, the film is noted for exploiting similar 2015 films, The Boy Next Door and Fifty Shades of Grey.
Synopsis:
The daughter of a wealthy real estate mogul falls in love with a younger man, and she is introduced to the world of BDSM. With her newly awakened sexual prowess, she is finally able to take control of her life.
Con gái của một doanh nhân bất động sản giàu có và quyền lực phải lòng một gã thanh niên trẻ tuổi hơn, và cô được đưa vào thế giới tình dục bạo hành và khổ dâm. Với năng lực tình dục mạnh mẽ vừa được đánh thức, cô cuối cùng đã có thể điều khiển trở lại cuộc sống của mình.
Charisma Carpenter as Michelle Mulan
Daniel Baldwin as Walter
Andy T. Tran as Lee
Hayley McLaughlin as Alana
Bryce Draper as Ryan Black
Morgan Obenreder as Dara
Michael Monks as Preston
Mark McClain Wilson as George
Noel Arthur as Jesse Aaron
Steffinnie Phrommany as Kori
| Bound | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Jared Cohn |
| Produced by | |
| Written by |
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| Starring | |
| Music by | Chris Cano |
| Cinematography | Laura Beth Love |
| Edited by | James Kondelik |
Production
company | |
| Distributed by | The Asylum |
Release dates
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Running time
| 91 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Plot
Michelle Mulan (Charisma Carpenter) is a real estate broker who has recently been promoted as a chairperson to a failing firm, even though she is fully qualified, she had only been promoted because of her father Walter's (Daniel Baldwin), status as chairman. While other chairmen want to sell the firm, she sees more advantage in merging with a larger company. Despite having a boyfriend, George (Mark McClain Wilson), Michelle does cheat on him to satiate her sexual desires. Also a single mother, she struggles to get her daughter, Dara (Morgan Obenreder), on the right track and takes her to a dinner. There, a man fifteen years her junior becomes enamored with her. After dropping Dara off at home, Michelle finds Ryan (Bryce Draper) trying to seduce her, but manages to ward him off. Still taking his number, Michelle initially decides not to meet him, but after getting a meeting enabling the merger, decides to do so. After rejecting a marriage proposal from George, Michelle goes out with Ryan. On their date, he introduces her to the world of B&D and S&M after which Michelle cheats on George with Ryan. After breaking up with George, Michelle begins to date Ryan and easily gives in to his dominating personality.
Falling in love, Michelle begins to call Ryan her 'master' and refers to herself as a 'messy whore'. At a benefit dinner, Ryan begins to insult Michelle's client and operate a vibrator egg she is wearing while she is with the client. Despite this, she manages to get the client to consider a merger. While trying to get Dara on the right track, Michelle also decides to learn more about being dominated and very quickly finds that she enjoys submitting to Ryan's will. After learning Ryan to be a car thief from her father, Michelle continues to try and negotiate a deal with the client to save the firm. Michelle refuses to continue seeing Ryan and gives herself in to him completely while also learning more and more about the submissive lifestyle. Along the way, however, she also learns how to become a dominant. Unknown to her, Ryan also seduced Dara and made her a submissive. Seeing this, she finally overthrows Ryan's bonds and uses her new-found sexual prowess to take control of her life. For this, she is assaulted by Ryan but manages to use a camera to knock him unconscious. She proceeds to take him to a private dungeon and bind him, turning him into the submissive. After torturing Ryan, Michelle turns him over to the police for having sex with her underage daughter. With her newfound confidence, Michelle seals the deal with her client while also making him her submissive.
Bound (2015)
In Theaters: 01/09/2015
Tie me up! Tie me down!
One might expect a review of Bound to open by noting that the movie shouldn’t be confused with the 1996 Jennifer Tilly/Gina Gershon thriller of the same name, but production company the Asylum would probably be happy if audiences did confuse it with that movie. More likely, they’re hoping audiences will confuse Bound with 50 Shades of Grey, the upcoming adaptation of the mega-popular erotic novel that is clearly the impetus behind Bound’s existence. Yes, this is another mockbuster from the company that brought you Transmorphers, Snakes on a Train and Atlantic Rim, the last of which was helmed by Bound writer-director Jared Cohn.
Cohn was also responsible for Asylum productions Jailbait and Bikini Spring Break, so it might be misguided to expect him to handle sexual content with respect and nuance. Strangely enough, though, while Bound may not be a good movie, it’s not a terrible representation of female sexuality and BDSM, and it deals head-on with the abusive undertones that many have pointed out in the central relationship of 50 Shades. It also refreshingly features a female lead two decades older than the main character of 50 Shades, formerBuffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel co-star Charisma Carpenter, who brings more talent than is usually found in an Asylum production to the role of real estate broker Michelle Milan. Daniel Baldwin, however, playing Michelle’s father/boss, sounds like he’s reading all of his lines from cue cards he’s never seen before, which is more in line with the typical effort from Asylum’s version of A-list stars.
A workaholic single mother with a teenage daughter and an unsatisfying sex life, Michelle meets mysterious younger man Ryan (model Bryce Draper) at a restaurant, and soon he’s making uncomfortable sexual demands of her. Red flags should perhaps go off for Michelle when Ryan accuses her of being a daddy’s girl and then declares, “I’m your father, your master, your husband, your god,” but instead she’s excited by his version of BDSM, which mostly involves being a total jerk and messing up her chances to negotiate a major deal at work.
At first the movie seems to be setting up the skeevy Ryan as some sort of sexual savior for Michelle, but it soon becomes clear that he’s nothing more than an abusive douchebag who uses BDSM as an excuse for his bad behavior. Cohn presents a few enlightening scenes that emphasize the respect and consent of actual BDSM relationships, and even though the climactic confrontation between Michelle and Ryan ends up being pretty tame, it offers up something resembling a satisfying character arc for Michelle.
Carpenter helps bring that arc to life in a performance that deserves better than an Asylum production, but Draper’s acting is vapid and flaccid, and the sex scenes, despite featuring copious topless footage of Carpenter, aren’t particularly sensual. The production values are predictably low, with scenes taking place in suspiciously sparse, under-populated locations, and there’s an obvious rushed quality to the entire enterprise (at one point a character’s name changes from Peter to Paul within the same scene, possibly because the filmmakers couldn’t afford a second take).
And while the story of Michelle’s sexual awakening is surprisingly not awful, at least half the plot is taken up with tedious, unconvincing negotiations in Michelle’s effort to save her father’s company via some sort of nonsensical corporate merger. That kind of cheap time-killing is an Asylum trademark, and just because Bound stumbles into something resembling actual insight from time to time doesn’t mean that it isn’t, at heart, just another product of the Asylum assembly line.
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