JUDAS KISS (director/writer: Sebastian Gutierrez; screenwriter:Deanna Fuller; cinematographer: James Chressanthis; cast: Simon Baker-Denny (Junior Armstrong), Carla Gugino (Coco Chavez), Alan Rickman (Det. David Friedman), Emma Thompson (Agent Sadie Hawkins), Til Schweiger (Ruben Rubenbauer), Greg Wise (Ben Dyson), Hal Holbrook (Sen. Rupert Hornbeck), Gil Bellows (Lizard Browning), Roscoe Lee Browne (Chief Bleeker), 1998)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
By the title of the film, you know that betrayal is part of the storyline; and, it is, in this hip attempt at neo-noir and a Quentin Tarantino type of film, using the colorful city of New Orleans as background for its murder and kidnapping tale. Two low-level criminals, Junior Armstrong (Simon Baker-Denny) and Coco Chavez (Carla Gugino), and a con artist, Lizard Browning (Gil Bellows), decide to go big-time and hire a psychotic muscleman, Ruben (Til), to join their kidnapping team for the taking of Ben Dyson (Greg), a billionaire Bill Gates type of a clone, who is a computer manufacturer. They end up holding him for a four million dollar ransom when they violently break through his home security system to nab him.
One snag in the operation develops, a lady appears in the hallway of Dyson's apartment and is shot by Coco, as the lady stares right at her. It turns out that she is the wife of Senator Hornbeck (Hal Holbrook). This becomes a high-profile case and calls for a dual investigation of federal (the kidnapping part) and the local police (the murder).
Two English actors are cast as American police, who try their hand at a southern accent and fail to be convincing. One is the head of the entire investigation, FBI agent Sadie Hawkins (Emma) and the other is local homicide detective, Lieutenant David Friedman (Rickman). He whines about having a woman above him in authority and they talk freely about sexual things as they introduce themselves to each other. When his police chief (Browne) assigns him to investigate the wife of the senator's death, he gripes about that, telling his chief that this is another detective's case.
When Hornbeck threatens Friedman, insisting that he get off the case and fails to assist him, after being informed by the detective that his wife is having an affair with Dyson, the detective suspects that this is no ordinary kidnapping for ransom and somehow or other the powerful senator is involved in it. The detective will go against police orders and continue to investigate on his own.
As a nervous accountant from Dyson's firm, the one who will hand over the ransom money to the kidnapers goes through the phone drill of where to drop the money off, the cops follow along and have some forced conversations on the way to stir up some humor in this poorly characterized and acted script, that will rely on trick plots and a series of betrayals to tell its very forgetable story. One of the cop conversations mimics many of the more recent neo-noir genre films in slickness, as Hawkins is reading Jim Thompson's crime novel "The Killer Inside Me," which he has already read and greatly admires, with the main thrust from that conversation being that the book says there is only one plot in a murder mystery and that nothing is what it seems.
While Coco is holding Dyson hostage and Lizard is on the phone with the accountant, Ruben and Junior are waiting by the train tracks for the ransom money. In her conversation with the arrogant computer whiz, she discovers that he is having an affair with the senator's wife and it dawns on her suddenly that she is being set-up by her boyfriend Junior. When the senator orders his man to kill Dyson and some of the police seem to be in on the plot, the story goes over-the edge.
Coco, the femme fatale and sex pot and the one through whom we follow the story, becomes human again and prevents Dyson from being executed.
Everything gets wrapped up in a nice bundle by the film's end, Coco even gets her vengence, as seen in the epilogue, by meeting Junior on Margarita Island 3 months later and taking care of business.
There was nothing fresh about the plot. The characters ranged from being obnoxious to being miscast, though if one wished to, a case could be made that Carla Gugino exuded some charm and sex appeal into the film. There was some inventiveness in all the plot twists, but the effort wasn't worth it. The storyline and plot twists could not hold up to scrutiny, anyway. Somehow this film, for the first time director, managed to have some entertainment value in its glossy feel and arduous attempt to keep one guessing at what will happen next, that is, if you weren't turned off by then by how hip it tried to be, as it was a little too cool for its own good, and the story suffered because there was no meaning to what was happening: it all seemed like a pointless exercise.
REVIEWED ON 11/11/99 GRADE: C-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews