KISS OF DEATH
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1995 Scott Renshaw
Starring: David Caruso, Nicolas Cage, Samuel L. Jackson, Stanley Tucci, Michael Rapaport, Helen Hunt, Kathryn Erbe, Ving Rhames. Screenplay: Richard Price. Director: Barbet Schroeder.
To answer the most obvious question first: no, David Caruso's naked posterior does not appear in KISS OF DEATH, although it might have been appropriate. After one highly-publicized season on "NYPD Blue" which included even-more-highly-publicized dorsal nudity, Caruso left the series in a yet-more-highly-publicized squabble over salary and time off to make movies, which had fellow cast members suggesting that he not let the door hit his bare backside on the way out. Caruso's first opportunity for an "I told you so" comes in KISS OF DEATH, but he might be advised to postpone any self- congratulation. In a film that is erratic but frequently intense, his casting in the lead role is the most glaring flaw.
Caruso plays Jimmy Kilmartin, a car thief trying to straighten out his life after a stint in prison. Unfortunately, he is pulled back into another job by his bad-news cousin Ronnie (Michael Rapaport), a job that goes bad and lands Jimmy back in prison. While inside he agrees to become a state's witness for District Attorney Frank Zioli (Stanley Tucci), but the one deal Jimmy makes isn't good enough for Zioli. As Jimmy comes up for parole, he is pressured into going undercover into the crime organization run by Little Junior Brown (Nicolas Cage), a psycho with a very short fuse. Caught between Little Junior, Zioli and a cop with a score to settle (Samuel L. Jackson), Jimmy realizes that his only way out is to take matters into his own hands.
The screenplay for KISS OF DEATH, written by Richard Price based on a 1947 film noir of the same name, is a dense piece of plotting, but an extremely confident one. Like a novel, KISS OF DEATH unfolds in well-developed pieces, building towards a solid conclusion with very little extraneous material. The plot's twists are both relevant and unexpected, and director Barbet Schroeder keeps a steady hand on the pace. Yet somehow, in the middle of all the clockwork plotting, gaping flaws in logic and flat-out sloppiness appear. In one sequence, Kilmartin's family is supposed to be under police protection, but his daughter is allowed to play on a swing along what is apparently a main thoroughfare with only one guard, while earlier two agents with high-powered rifles stood watch while she played near a secluded cliffside. Then, near the end of the film, one of the big payoff revelations is spoiled by an unnecessary establishing shot. It sometimes seems that Schroeder is so busy painting the trim on the house that is KISS OF DEATH that he fails to notice it's missing a wall.
It's a good thing that so many of the people in that house are so interesting. Samuel L. Jackson turns in one of his now-routine dynamite supporting turns as Calvin, the wounded cop who develops an unexpected connection with Jimmy. He is mis-used in the conclusion for a gimmicky applause moment, but otherwise turns in stellar work. Michael Rapaport, still growing his hair out from his role as the skinhead in HIGHER LEARNING, is fantastic as the sleazy Ronnie right through to his brutal comeuppance, as is Anthony Heald in a small role as Little Junior's slick and savvy attorney. Add Stanley Tucci's duplicitous D. A. and Helen Hunt as Jimmy's recovering alcoholic wife, and you have one of the best supporting casts since PULP FICTION.
Unlike PULP FICTION, however, the lead performances are not of the same caliber. Nicolas Cage is an actor who has shown the ability to play everything from romantic leads to villains, but there is no center to Little Junior. One second he is brutal but shrewd; the next he is simply off his nut. As for Caruso, he is given a role that would be a challenge to make sympathetic by an actor with much greater range. Caruso is unable to give Jimmy any humanity, delivering every line in the same hushed, primed-to-explode manner. Only he never does explode, and it is particularly telling that Jimmy's one big emotional outburst occurs behind a closed door. We need to see Jimmy as a charater reacting to what is happening to him, but by playing him with an omnipresent hangdog resignation, Caruso might have been the KISS OF DEATH for a potentially engrossing thriller.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 state's witnesses: 6.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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