You won't be disappointed!

It is a performances centric movie

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

It's 1972 L.A. Karen O'Connor (Alison Lohman) is writing about entertainment duo Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth). She tries to get to the truth of what happened 15 years ago. Lanny and Vince were performing a 39 hour telethon in Miami and Karen had a central part as a child. The womanizing Lanny had a night with the hotel maid Maureen O'Flaherty (Rachel Blanchard) before the telethon. Afterwards, the boys go to a New Jersey hotel where Maureen is found dead in their room. The death was quickly covered up and ruled a suicide.Director Atom Egoyan brings a labyrinthian style to the material. It can be a bit clearer about certain parts. It works better with a second viewing. The main deficiency is Lohman. She is much too childlike as an actress. It works for her for certain roles and in this case, she is asked to play herself as a child. I would rather have Vera Farmiga and her sister Taissa can play the younger version. In the end, the child version isn't a big enough role to truly influence the selection for Karen. The Bacon Firth combo is an intriguing one. That's the level that Lohman has to hit but just misses. Egoyan could have helped with a clearer structure to the story. This is still worth a second look if only for the hidden tension between Bacon and Firth.

What is this movie supposed to be? A murder mystery? Probably not. Not too much attention is paid to the mystery and the solution is lame, almost thrown away. Existential? We do see a lot of the victim's nude body and her dead face. Creepy and unnecessary. Is the film meant to tell us about the adventures of a bright female writer uncovering secrets? Nope. The female lead character is kind of dumb (but beautiful, of course), and the "secrets" are not very compelling. The unraveling of these tepid secrets takes time and is confusing with too many flashbacks into different eras and places, all of which look the same. Thus, it is too hard to follow to allow viewer involvement in the plot.This movie reminded me of the soft-core porn movies shown on late night cable or satellite TV. This is different in that the performances are that of skilled professionals. Great sets! Great music! But the enterprise seemed to have the same purpose as the soft-core throwaways: an excuse to show woman's bodies and simulated sex.

Lanny and Vince are a 1950's comedy duo. At the height of their fame, a young college student is found dead in their hotel suite. Neither of the men is charged with murder, but the suspicions surrounding the girl's death cause the duo's act to fall apart.Fifteen years later, a young journalist called Karen O'Connor agrees to pay Vince 1 million dollars to reveal the truth of that murderous night. Vince accepts the offer. He's long since withdrawn from public life and needs the money. Lanny, in contrast, still has a thriving career. He contacts Vince and tries to discourage him. Pretty soon Vince is dead and Lanny is having a romantic affair with Karen the journalist.As with most Egoyan films, "Where the Truth Lies" is a noir in which a central character (Karen) investigates and attempts to reconcile a past tragedy. All of Egoyan's films feature multiple narrative threads rotating around a single traumatic event. The past is then revealed in increments, until the film builds to a climax of truth.The film has lots of problems. It aims for a sleazy view of 1950s showbiz, in which the duo's cosy public persona is violently at odds with the drug-filled reality, but Egoyan's style is far too cold and caustic. Such a sleazy tale needs a far more lurid, playful style. Our two leads (Bacon and Firth) themselves have no chemistry; their performances have no joy and so there's no sense of tragedy when they finally drift apart. And despite a large budget, Egoyan's too weak a visualist to build a strong noir aesthetic. He tries to create a colour palette worthy of "Vertigo", but is far out of his depth.And yet, despite these flaws, this is an excellent picture. One expects a fairly detached camera in an Egoyan film. One expects icy storytelling and abrasive characters. One expects ample sex and a good deal of sleaze. This is an intensely personal film, and critics seem to be deriding it simply because Egoyan didn't sell out.7.9/10 - Worth two viewings.

Alison Lohman is a young journalist trying to find out "Where the Truth Lies" in this 2005 film starring Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and Maury Chaykin. Bacon and Firth are a kind of Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis team, and a dead girl is found in one of their hotel suites. Karen (Lohman) is to assist part of the act, Vince (Firth) in writing his memoirs years later. She has a hidden agenda, which is to learn how Maureen Flaherty, a maid in a Las Vegas hotel, was found dead in a New Jersey hotel suite all those years ago.As a film, this left me pretty cold; indeed, everything about it is cold, including some very good performances from Bacon and Firth. Nothing warmed up the camera, though. Alison Lohman was so bad she was laughable. I had very little interest in whodunit or why because I didn't care about anyone.There's lots of sex, nudity and drug-taking, and I frankly didn't realize this was a controversial part of the film. I agree that an R rating would have been fine. I'm sure the guys loved it.I'm always amazed that when a film is this bad, how people go out of their way to declare it a master of film-making. Where the Truth Lies reminded me of Leaving Las Vegas - terrible.