'Dangerous Lies': Netflix thriller regurgitates the same old story with a plot that defies logic
Spoiler alert for 'Dangerous Lies'
Netflix's latest offering in the thriller department is out and though it may not be its best film, what else can you do when you're stuck inside as the world battles the coronavirus pandemic?
Starring Camilla Mendes and Jessie T Usher who play the young couple, Katie and Adam Franklin, 'Dangerous Lies' starts off a lot like 'Knives Out' and maybe even 'Parasite'.
However, while both movies won the Academy Awards for adapted and original screenplays respectively, we hardly think 'Dangerous Lies' would deserve any.
When the movie begins, Katie is at work in a diner, where Adam is a customer — he is surrounded by books and papers to show viewers that this man is studying hard for a degree in MBA.
Later, the two sneak away for a tête-à-tête and a makeout session, cluing us in on with explicit exposition that they are, in fact, married — and if it wasn't clear before, that they are quite poor.
When they return to the diner, they notice that they walked into the middle of a robbery. Adam plays the hero and takes down the robber all by himself, despite Katie warning him of the danger.
We then move forward four months where Katie is now working as the caretaker for an old man named Leonard (Elliot Gould) who is reasonably rich and, of course, old. Katie and Leonard are good friends, of course, and when Katie and Adam have a fight, she goes to Leonard to explain her woes.
Of course, Leonard being the lonely old man that he is, then gives Adam a job as the gardener and writes the couple a really big check. At this moment, we are given an idea of what kind of people Adam and Katie are.
Katie feels uncomfortable taking such a big amount, but Adam is all for it — he hates being poor, something that the movie tries to show repeatedly, and just in case viewers didn't understand it, Katie says these exact words later on.
When Leonard is found dead one day, Katie is understandably upset. For some reason, Katie and Adam still stroll around Leonard's house, and there, they discover a chest full of cash. One would think this would come to play a bigger role — it doesn't.
Conveniently, a lawyer shows up claiming that Leonard hired her and left everything he owns to Katie. The lawyer, Julia Byron-Kim (Jamie Chung), also serves as Katie's gal pal in convenient scenes. Curiously, nobody seems to question the veracity of the will when there's a murder investigation involved.
Moreover, there is a third party lurking around, a man claiming to be a real estate agent, Mickey Hayden (Cam Gigandet).
Turns out, Mickey is really a robber and years ago, he stole diamonds with his partner who betrayed him and then hid the diamonds in the house — if anyone else is reminded of the 1999 film 'Blue Streak', starring Martin Lawrence and Luke Wilson, you are not alone.
A whole bunch of twists later, it is revealed that Julia was working with Mickey. It wasn't poor Adam who had something to do with the murder — despite a detective linking Adam to the diner robber as being part of the same university, again, another completely useless plot point.
Eventually, Adam, Mickey and Julia end up dead. Katie inherits Leonard's house — it would seem that no one is still questioning the will even though it was revealed that the lawyer who brought it up was one of the bad guys.
When Katie gets up from tending the garden, we also see that she is pregnant — just in case viewers might have been upset that Adam died without getting to spend the rest of his life with Katie.
As mentioned, 'Dangerous Lies' seems inspired by a lot of other movies including 'Knives Out', 'Parasite' and 'Blue Streak', however, the filled-in blanks are not worthy enough to merit an entirely different movie. What made 'Knives Out' work was its use of logic — something that is completely absent in the Netflix thriller.
Suspend that sense of logic you might be seeking and 'Dangerous Lies' may be partly worthy of your attention. However, it might just be more entertaining to rewatch the movies that seemed to inspire the film.
'Dangerous Lies' is now streaming on Netflix.