Where the Truth Lies is a movie based on a book by Rupert Holmes.  Holmes is a bit of a talent, he writes mystery-thriller books like this one(I have not read any of his work), He has written plays and won Tony awards for doing so.  He’s produced music for the likes of Barbra Streisand.  He’s written songs for the likes of The Drifters and The Platters.  He wrote the short but well liked television sitcom Remember WENN.  Oh yeah and he’s written and sang his own material, you might know him for a little song Escape (The Pina Colada Song).  So he is a talented entertainer in a lot of ways, he has had success in every field of entertainment.  But can he write a great noir that translates to a great neo noir film?

The Canadian Director Atom Egoyan wrote this screenplay and directed it.  I really like his films and he has made a few really good neo-noir films in his career.

This cast is pretty amazing, especially looking at where some of them are 10 years later.  This film stars Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth as a Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin type duo.  Firth has gone on to win an Oscar for The King’s Speech and has become quite the star.  We have two femme fatale’s in this movie, Maureen played by Rachel Blanchard, who has shown up on the very good Fargo television series. The second femme fatale is Karen played by Alison Lohman who has done some amazing work but seems to have gotten married in 2009 and has disappeared from the movies.  Anybody know why she hasn’t been in anything lately?

This film starts out with our showbiz duo doing a telethon but we realize something is a miss right away.  Our team has a love/hate relationship for sure.  We than find our first femme fatale Maureen in a hotel room tub full of ice and long dead.  We than flash forward to our second femme fatale Karen who is a journalist and is writing a book about our entertainment team with an emphasis on the incident of the dead girl.  We continue flashing back and forward as Karen tries to find out what really happened that fateful night to Maureen.  Is she to close to the story?  Will the same fate fall on her?  Will she find out how Maureen died and why?

Favorite Tidbit:  Egoyan made many cuts to this to get it an R rating instead of the NC-17 rating, he failed.  It was later learned that the cut of the film American audiences eventually saw was the same cut that premiered at Cannes.

I really enjoyed this film as I have most of Egoyan’s films.  If you like your neo-noir on the thriller, murder mystery side, you will like this film.  Give it a try if you have not seen it yet.