Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		1.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

The Tie That Binds Blu-ray Movie Review

The Film That Had Potential

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 20, 2011

The Tie That Binds is an unusual collection of one-offs. It's the only feature film directed by screenwriter Wesley Strick, who wrote Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear and has co-written various projects since then, including, most recently, the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. It's the sole film from a script by Michael Auerbach, who has since become an editor for television fare like Dancing with the Stars (go figure). And it was the one and only film to star young Julia Devin, a nominee for best supporting actress at the Young Artist Awards the following year for her affecting portrayal of a lost child trying to make sense of a world that even the Brothers Grimm would find baffling. Devin disappeared from acting after this film, but her haunting presence is the chief reason (though not the only one) to see The Tie That Binds, even in this problematic Blu-ray presentation from Mill Creek.

Janie Netherwood (Devin), who we think is about six years old, doesn't lead a normal life. She spends her days riding in stolen cars, and she often finds herself huddling in the back seat at night while her parents burglarize random houses. Her mother, Leann (Daryl Hannah), sometimes sings to her, but Leann is usually too busy helping her husband, John (Keith Carradine), terrorize the unfortunate occupants of the homes they rob. Sometimes the Netherwoods let people live; sometimes they don't. But they always record the moment on Polaroids. It's their equivalent of a family album.

One night, though, the police catch the Netherwoods by surprise. (Exactly how isn't explained, but it's suggested that they tripped a silent alarm.) Officer David Carrey (Ned Vaughn) spots Janie in the parked car and tries to remove her, but Papa John attacks him. Officer Carrey shoots him in the shoulder, forcing John to flee with Leann. Janie is turned over to the appropriate social service organization, but not before the cops make the mistake of placing her beloved doll in a plastic evidence bag, provoking a reaction that lets everyone know she's her father's daughter.

Dana and Russell Clifton (Moira Kelly and Vincent Spano) are a childless couple who agree to foster Janie, with an eye to eventual adoption. Janie adapts only gradually to her new, comfortably normal life. She's used to regarding everything as temporary, and she suffers from nightmares of her parents' (especially her father's) return. She refers to him as "the Tooth Fairy", which, in Janie's personal mythology, is not a benevolent being. One day, Dana and Russell are shocked to discover that Janie is keeping a bread knife under her pillow as a defense against the Tooth Fairy's return. Prompted by a school psychologist, Janie draws the Tooth Fairy, and it's an excellent likeness of John Netherwood, though no one would know that other than Janie. At a school play, an elaborately costumed ogre so terrifies Janie that she bolts from the auditorium and runs out into a street full of traffic.

Dana and Russell are smart and caring enough to understand that Janie's past contains something terrible, and they persuade their friend, Gil (Bruce A. Young), an assistant D.A., to give them access to arrest records in an effort to identify her birth parents. But the Netherwoods are already looking for them. Having recovered from his shoulder wound, John Netherwood is determined to get his child back. (One suspects from the way Janie stares at Russell Clifton during her first meal in his home that John is a control freak who would never let any female escape his domination.) Beginning with the cop who shot John, the Netherwoods systematically trace Janie to the Cliftons, but Dana and Russell evade them by moving in with Gil and his pregnant wife, Lisa-Marie (Cynda Williams), under police protection. But that only works until Lisa-Marie goes into labor and is hospitalized. Then the Cliftons take Janie to the unfinished spec house that Russell is building in the country, where the film's final showdown occurs.

One of the film's most effective devices is the liberal use of fairy tale themes and imagery, exemplified by the Tooth Fairy and the characters in the school play. Julia Devin's Janie often looks as if she could have stepped out of the pages of a storybook, and she behaves like the classic child heroine who finds herself in a strange land with only her own courage and determination to sustain her. Unfortunately, in the last ten minutes or so of the film, when a thriller should be hurtling toward its conclusion with maximum efficiency and nary a wasted second, director Strick and his screenwriter err gravely by introducing unnecessary plot mechanics solely to make the fairy tale elements as literal as possible. (I'm being deliberately vague to avoid spoilers.) The end of a thriller is precisely where one should never risk jolting the viewer into thinking, "Oh come on!", but that's exactly what happens, several times, as The Tie That Binds winds up its story.

The Tie That Binds Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

This is another of those Mill Creek Blu-rays that is incorrectly labeled as "1080p" when it is really 1080i. Fortunately, in this case, the interlaced format did not appear to have a negative impact on image quality; I did not detect obvious instances of combing or other forms of video noise associated with interlaced presentations. Overall, the image was reasonably detailed and filmlike, and the colors were decently saturated and natural, consistent with the usual look achieved by cinematographer Bobby Bukowski. Occasionally, though, director Wesley Strick seemed to be reaching for a touch of Scorsese-style subjectivity in his use of color, as in a scene where Dana runs after Janie, who is wearing red, and the light briefly glows red as each of them passes through a hallway.

Compression, artifacting and other digital errors aren't an issue, but the source material does have a few moments with significant print damage, and that's something that probably would have been fixed if the film had remained with the studio instead of being farmed out to Mill Creek. Any such flaw is jarring, and the worst one occurs during the film's tense finale, which is especially unfortunate.

The Tie That Binds Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The DTS-HD MA 2.0 track (incorrectly labeled "2.0 Dolby Digital", as is typical of Mill Creek) is the disc's greatest failing. The film was released in Dolby Digital and, given the "Spectral Recording" logo that appears in the end credits", almost certainly had a 5.1 track. The 2.0 mixdown that appears on the Blu-ray is one of the worst I've ever heard from a 5.1 track (either that, or it's the worst Dolby Surround mix ever made at a time when even novice technicians should have been experts at creating 2.0 surround). Voices are sometimes indistinct, and individual words can be hard to make out -- an especially galling issue on a disc that doesn't include subtitles or closed captions. Graeme Revell's score remains embedded in the front speakers and never projects out into the room to surround the listener. It also sometimes has a warbling quality, as if it were being played back on an old reel-to-reel tape machine with excessive amounts of wow and flutter.

Perhaps the most serious of the track's sins is a recurrent surround artifact of which the origin is unclear, but it adds a kind of "whooshing" sound at all sorts of inappropriate moments, as if someone were running a vacuum cleaner in reverse. Odd sounds are routinely used in thrillers to put an audience on edge, but this one simply distracts and annoys.

The Disney organization has every right to license out its second- and third-tier properties to an organization like Mill Creek, just as Sony is sending much of their back catalogue to Image Entertainment. But Disney ought to send Mill Creek proper elements for both audio and video. And if Disney is doing so, and it's Mill Creek who is making the short-sighted and foolish decision to provide degraded 2.0 audio on these titles originally released in 5.1, then they should wise up and get a clue. Even a lossy 5.1 track that sounds like the original is preferable to a lossless remix that sounds terrible.

The Tie That Binds Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

As usual with Mill Creek, none.

The Tie That Binds Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Despite the letdown of an ending, The Tie That Binds is worth seeing for Julia Devin's performance, for Keith Carradine's scary turn as John Netherwood, and for the low-key but effective chemistry between Vincent Spano and Moira Kelly as they attempt to learn how to be parents. But don't buy Mill Creek's Blu-ray. Rent it, or write them a polite letter insisting that they remaster it with a proper soundtrack.