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Innocent Lies

1995

Action / Drama / Mystery / Thriller

6
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 14% · 1 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 14% · 500 ratings
IMDb Rating 4.5/10 10 1181 1.2K

Plot summary

In September 1938 a British detective comes to a small French coastal town in order to investigate the death of a colleague. Prime suspects are the members of English aristocratic family with plenty of skeletons in the closet. This is a loose adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel Towards Zero.

Director

Top cast

Keira Knightley as Young Celia
Joanna Lumley as Lady Helena Graves / Celia's mother
Alexis Denisof as Christopher / Celia's fiance
Stephen Dorff as Jeremy / Celia's brother
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
810.33 MB
1280*544
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 28 min
Seeds 1
1.47 GB
1920*816
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 28 min
Seeds 6

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Seldarius 4 / 10

Towards zero is only the amount of sense here

I believe Towards Zero to be one of Christie's best and when I read there was an adaptation that her usually quite tolerant estate had declined any involvement with (an extremely rare occurrence to the chagrin of some Christie purists), I went out to search for it.The setting is both beautiful and poignant. An Art Deco Villa on a clifftop in 1938 France, undercurrents of the coming war rippling even through the lives of the well-off family at the centre of the story.British detective Adrian Dunbar, along with his small daughter, visits to bury his old friend, a fellow cop, who apparently and very suddenly has committed suicide. It appears said cop came to investigate the death of a young member of the aptly named Graves family many years ago and never left. What his relationship with the Graves' exactly entailed we never find out (the matriarch insists they had an affair, but her word is as good as anyone else's in this movie, which is no good at all). I guess it would count as a spoiler if there was anything to spoil, that we also never find out what happened to him.Two things are quite clear from the start. The slimy Oxford student son Jeremy is the most likely suspect and his relationship with his sister is not sisterly in the least. Again, no surprises will reveal themselves on either account.The hard boiled detective naturally falls immediately under the spell of the beautiful daughter Celia and risks his career to help her escape - from what exactly, not even she herself seems to know. Numerous other storylines are woven (and mostly dropped without any resolution). Various females are upset with the detective, but since they won't tell him why, the film also doesn't care any longer. Motives of anyone are foggy at best and often change from scene to scene. Some sequences are almost Lynchian in their absurdity and their lack of any connection to the plot, but feel much more accidental. The most consistent part is the camera following around young Celia to expose her body from every angle possible.The ending scene wakes memories rather more of Dial M for Murder than Towards Zero, but I doubt either would like to be associated with this film. In fact, despite some effort, I could find no traces of the intricate plot Christie had woven for Towards Zero. No perfect alibi, no sinister end goal, no double bluff. Instead we get to see Gabrille Anwar's breasts under a variety of semi-translucent fabrics. I guess that counts for something.
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Reviewed by FStriptych 4 / 10

All Style and No Substance

If you like longing glances into the misty distance, unmotivated yet psychotic incest, and daft police work, you'll love this waste of time and film.

The casting director clearly liked a specific "look" of female. As a result, I spent the first half of the movie just trying to keep the female characters straight. Beautiful women are not enough to save this flimsiest of scripts, however.

I feel cheated. I could've been playing solitaire. It would've been equally fulfilling. Clearly, I do not recommend this movie. I was hoping for so much more from a largely watchable cast.

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