Dangerous Lies Netflix Original Movie Review
Major Spoilers are included in this movie review. Please read with caution.
I decided to watch this Netflix Original out of boredom and found myself… confused that a movie this poorly constructed actually exists. I cannot start with what the movie is about, but not because for spoilers, because the plot doesn’t make sense. Let’s start with the opening scene and move awkwardly from there.
A young married couple, Katie Franklin (Camila Mendez from Riverdale) and Adam Kettner (Jessie T. Usher from The Boys) are down at Smiley Dinner. Katie works there as a server, and Adam is there to pick her up / study for college at a booth. This is where things went sideways in the beginning: the characters unnecessarily hid their marital status from the audience until they had sex in the car. Their conversation had them flirty and pretending not to know each other at first. Then a robbery went down, and Adam saved the day, but none of this seemed to matter because…
A four-month time jump happened, and we were thrust into a completely different movie. The opening scene didn’t matter anymore. It was brought up awkwardly later, but it only added to the confusion I was experiencing. Katie is now a caregiver to an elderly man named Leonard Wellesley (Elliot Gould), who lives alone in a very nice house. He was also the only humorous character in the whole movie. Once Leonard died, he took what little entertainment there was with him.
Then a bunch of convoluted plot developments followed. There was also a lot of exposition-heavy dialogue throughout the whole film. It was really annoying. More side-characters were introduced as well: Leonard’s attorney Julia Byron-Kim (Jaime Chung), real estate agent Mickey Hayden (Cam Gigandet), and Detective Chelser (Sasha Alexander). Adam and Katie had no idea who to trust with anything especially when they found a hundred grand in the house and a bunch of diamonds that led to more convolution.
The only consistent character throughout the film was Katie Franklin, who insisted that everything was wrong and that they were way over their heads. Camila Mendez was actually not that bad performance-wise, but she couldn’t make bad writing good. This also made her husband Adam look super antagonistic and creepy for wanting to steal a dead man’s money and stolen diamonds that somehow made their way into the house.
Overall, this movie was a real train-wreck with no satisfying ending. I wouldn’t recommend watching this unless you’re into trashing movies. Hopefully, reading my review was torture enough.