Excellent film with a gripping story!

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Pedro Almodovar's "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" from 1989 is an earlier film from this quirky director. Almodovar's characters are inevitably off the wall and in bizarre situations. This film and its characters are no exception."Tie Me Up!" was given an X rating (later NC-17) for a couple of scenes and in the United States at least, it was quite controversial.The story concerns a recently-released mental hospital patient, Ricky (Antonio Banderas) who kidnaps an ex-porn star, Marina (Victoria Abril) currently making a low-budget horror film. Though the title suggests S&M, there isn't any. Ricky ties her up when he needs to leave the apartment.An expert in carpentry, locksmithing, and other usable occupations, Ricky had actually been leaving the mental hospital when he felt like it and then returning. During one of those times, he had a one-night stand with Marina. Deeply in love with her, he stalks her on the film set and, when she doesn't speak to him, confronts her in her apartment, declaring his love and his intention of marrying her and fathering her children. Marina, of course, would like to escape him, but Ricky makes that difficult. A former heroin addict, Marina has a toothache and explains that nothing will help except strong medicine from her doctor up the street. So Ricky handcuffs her to him and they walk to the doctor's apartment, where Marina receives an injection and a prescription. Later, when she needs more drugs, Ricky goes to the town square to score some and ends up beaten to a pulp. When he returns, Marina is horrified and begins to have real feelings for him. Meanwhile, her sister Lola (Loles Leon) is worried, believing Marina to have disappeared.There is a very long sex scene in this film that took 9 hours to film, with Almodovar using the last take."Tie Me Up!" launched Banderas in the United States, and this is his last film with Almodovar. He plays Ricky beautifully - as an innocent from a troubled background who will do anything to convince this woman to love him. Abril is a sexy and feisty Marina, and, like Ricky, she is a lost soul trying to find her way. Ricky is an orphan; Abril has a mother, sister, and nephew, but both of them are alone in their worlds.Despite the title and the sex, this is actually a sweet tale with likable characters. Almodovar often has a bizarre way of telling a story and making a point, but the results, with few exceptions, are well worth it.

A film where a mentally disturbed man kidnaps and imprisons a woman, threatens her life, in the hope that she will eventually fall in love with him would be morally offensive had it been made by an American of the Republican Party or a member of the NRA. However, this was made by one of the hippest, happening filmmakers in the world, Pedro Almodovar. It's my understanding that Donald Trump flirted with the idea of becoming a filmmaker. Just imagine if Donald Trump had produced or directed this film before going into politics! Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren would have bled from the eyes! Call me crazy, but I think this movie would be viewed far more negatively today.Because of this, we have a film that can be openly enjoyed not only by lovers of edgy cinema, but also by people who dig it because it excuses the treatment of a woman as the rightful property of whatever man acts on his obsession over her. Even a man who has a questionable reputation regarding women, (i.e. Bill Cosby, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Islamic true believers} could publicly declare this to be one of their favorite films without fear that women will get angry and judgmental. Well, maybe not Trump. Still, it's a film that can reasonably appeal to the entire political spectrum.This sort of movie may give hope to any man or culture believing that courtship involving kidnapping, tying up and gagging someone is not a disgusting, offensive crime. If you're a woman, try imagining being kidnapped and held prisoner not by the young & handsome Banderas, but by the smelliest, creepiest guy imaginable. A guy who probably lives in a rusty, leaky trailer on a dirt road surrounded by weeds, used tires, junk cars and broken furniture. If you're a man, imagine that woman is your daughter or your wife.SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! DON'T READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE AND DON'T WISH TO KNOW THE INCREDIBLE PLOT TWIST! Not only does the mentally disturbed kidnapper eventually have sex with the object of his obsession, it is she who initiates it! If you don't mind the context within the story of the film, it's a beautifully erotic scene. I like the look of pleased surprise that came over Banderas face when she started kissing him. Despite his wishful thinking when he kidnapped and bound the woman, even threatened her with bodily harm and death, he clearly did not expect her to become so sexually aggressive! But the happy ending doesn't stop there! She not only accepts him as her mate, her sister happily accepts him as a new member of the family! Maybe she wants sex with him too!

This movie I must say, really didn't do much for me, or have me, if only for the two leads and some nice loud sets. TMUTMD is a very different love story indeed, with an offbeat and odd scenario, if for the characters themselves. An early star in the making, Banderas really gives a good performance, as a hunky troubled patient, Ricky, with some violent tendencies, who's just been released from the nuthouse. He's been doing the older matron there too. Obsessing about an old flame, and B porn actress, Martika (sexy April) he tracks her down, intent on making a life with her, to much her disapproval, first not even remembering him. Antonio dons a few disguises and his unstable self, were at moments, unsettling (those patients who can flip switches, calm, one moment, crazy the next. Resorting to kidnapping her, Ricky's determined to break her down while sharing some sexual interludes with her, while keeping her tied up, a few ways over a couple of days, where a movie set is missing a lead actress. April's character was very intriguing and captivating, where there are times she becomes compassionate and understanding to her captor, where other moments, she absolutely hates him. She was a hard nut to figure. You can't deny this great foreign actress has a sexy and magical presence. Yes, there are some saucy sex scenes, but it's not up to your average quota in these adult titles, foreign or otherwise. One scene, funny as, has her fantasizing in the bath, with only a wind up aquaman, below, keeping her asexual company, swimming along the surface and ending up at the honey pot of hers, between her legs. The movie is worth watching for the actors, especially if a fan of Banderas, years before he packed that guitar case of hard armorment. It's cute and happy ending is another oddity, if also unsatisfying, in one of the oddest love stories you'll see, that won't grow on you, and least likely forget, in the weeks that pass.

I have a VHS copy of this that I have never opened. I don't know why, but it is one of the very few Almodovar films that I have not seen.Antonio Banderas already had a couple of Almodovar films to his credit, and he was just 30 in this film.The object of his desire is Victoria Abril, another Almodovar protégé, who appeared with Banderas in The Law of Desire.The bathtub scene with the scuba diver is to die for.Banderas kidnaps Abril and tries to get her to love him. Holy Stockholm Syndrome! Believe it or not, there is only one love scene in the movie, but it was spectacular.