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.

Atom Egoyan's movie 'Where the Truth Lies' tells the story of an ambitious journalist investigating (in the 1970s) the break up of a once-successful entertainment double act, which had happened in the aftermath of a suspicious death fifteen years before. The two periods are immaculately portrayed; but the plot is contrived, the dialogue clunky, and the former stars so unpleasant that it doesn't make for a very nice movie. Even the character of the journalist is thin, and yet inconsistent: is she the angel of truth, or just as tough a cookie as everyone else she deals with? The film could have exploited this paradox, but instead, it feels more like evidence of an outline story that never acquired the necessary depth. Especially when compared with the same director's masterly 'The Sweet Hereafter', it's a disappointing effort.

This film asks you to imagine what it would have been like if Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis had broken up their comedy team, not because they couldn't stand each other anymore, but because one of them killed a girl. It's an intriguing idea. Unfortunately, this movie never lives up to that promise. It turns into a pointlessly convoluted and almost laughably conceived "thriller" where poor Alison Lohman is hung out to dry in a starring role she's not ready for.Vince Collins and Lanny Morris (Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon) are a famous show biz duo of the 1950s. Vince is the class and Lanny the scoundrel and they're rich and famous, lighting up movie screens and night clubs all over America. After performing a 39 hour telethon for charity in Miami, they fly to New Jersey to open up a new night club. That's when a dead girl from Miami turns up in Vince and Lanny's New Jersey hotel suite. 15 years later in the early 1970s, a young journalist named Karen O'Connor (Alison Lohman) is looking to write a book about Collins and Morris. She's gotten a publisher to fork over a million dollars to get Vince to finally talk about their lives and careers and especially what happened to that dead girl. When Karen finds out that Lanny is writing his own book, she becomes even more determined to uncover the secret that Vince and Lanny have been protecting for so long.The good things about Where the Truth Lies are that it has a nice amount of nudity, including lots of Kevin Bacon's bare behind for the ladies and some of the gentlemen, one really fine sex scene and superb performances from Bacon and Colin Firth. They essentially have to create multiple versions of the same men. They not only have to portray Vince and Lanny at the height of their talent and fame as well as on the downside of their careers and lives, they also have to show us Vince and Lanny both as they really are and the personas they hide behind when facing the rest of the world. They make you want to see more of Vince and Lanny as big stars of the 50s and make you feel sorry for them as fading stars of the 70s.All of that, however, isn't nearly enough to overcome all the problems with this film. To start with, Alison Lohman does a poor job with her role. Karen O'Connor is a complex and demanding character that not only has to measure up to Vince and Lanny but has to carry a lot of the story all by herself. At this point in her career, Lohman is clearly not in the same acting league as Bacon and Firth. She gives Karen all the emotional depth of a teenage girl working behind a department story make-up counter. Lohman seems to have talent, but she has none of the skills needed for this sort of performance and becomes a void that drains all the energy out of the story.For its own part, this story is overly complex and badly structured. There are dueling narrators and multiple flashbacks, different versions of the same events and totally unnecessary subterfuge. The murder of the Miami girl is barely referenced in the first half of the movie and then completely dominates the second half, creating different tones and paces for the two halves. And then there's the secret of the dead Miami girl. Oy. I suppose it might have seemed like a clever twist when somebody first came up with it, either writer/director Atom Egoyan or Rupert Holmes who wrote the book upon which this movie is based. It should have only seemed clever for 5 seconds, though, because it gets dumber and dumber and dumber the more you think about it.Where the Truth Lies is skillfully directed and Bacon and Firth give appealing and layered performances, but the movie is fatally compromised by too many moments when you're watching it and thinking "You've got to be kidding me". This is one of those DVDs you see sitting on the shelf and you wonder why you haven't heard of it because there are some reasonably big stars in it. The reason why you haven't heard of this film and the others like it is that they're just plain bad. Instead of wasting money promoting it in theaters, these things are puked almost directly into video stores where they wait for some unsuspecting sucker to rent them. Don't be one of the suckers who rents Where the Truth Lies.

"Having to be a nice guy is the toughest job in the world when you're not."Where the Truth Lies is pretty decent mystery/thriller that I probably would have never seen if it didn't have Alison Lohman in it. I'm glad I did, though, because I liked it quite a bit. More than I expected to.The story is about a young journalist in the 1970's (Lohman) who is charged with writing a book about a two-man song & dance showbiz act that she idolized as a kid. There's a mystery about a girl who mysteriously died in their hotel room in the 50's, and as she learns more about the two men (played by Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth) and the incident of the woman's death, she finds out secrets that may be best left uncovered.I thought the plot was pretty good, though it perhaps had one more twist than was wanted or necessary. All of the main actors did a fine job, and worked well together. I have to mention that this movie is unrated (at least, the version I watched), and there's plenty of sex and nudity. Not to the extent of what you can find on Cinemax on any given night or anything like that, but how much you enjoy seeing Alison Lohman naked (or Kevin Bacon's butt, for the ladies) will probably influence your opinion of the movie. Let's just say that I had no complaints.If you're looking for a way to spend a few hours in front of the couch, you could do a lot worse than Where the Truth Lies. For an under the radar movie, I thought it was solid and entertaining.