Kiss Of Death (1994) A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1997 by Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: Strangely uncomplelling but still compulsively watchable modern Brooklyn noir tale. Caruso's good, Cage is over the top, Jackson is worth the price of admission.
KISS OF DEATH bears little to no resemblance to the hard-boiled classic that it takes its name from. It's almost entirely an invention of Richard Price and Barbet Schroeder, the writer and director, and it's an odd animal to be sure. Maybe a more over-the-top directing style would have suited the material, which is by itself convoluted as all hell.
David Caruso (steely and very watchable) stars as a former crook who's gone straight after a stay in prison; he's got a wife and kid now. One night his cousin, still crooked, comes banging on the door: they need someone to drive some carriers full of stolen cars for them. Caruso's character takes the job, but for his trouble, he gets shot through the hand, and a cop (Samuel Jackson, very good) almost dies from that bullet. He would've died for sure if Caruso's hand hadn't been in the way, but some people just have no damn gratitude.
Caruso goes to jail, but manages to get some time shaved off by helping the cops. They want to put away Little Junior (Nicholas Cage), the son of a bigtime hood who's looking to inherit his daddy's power. Caruso goes back in to infiltrate Junior's crime circles, but then things get far more complicated than anyone expects. Junior himself is one strange character -- one of those people who's full of vocabulary words but at the same time is not quite as smart as he thinks he is. He takes a peculiar shine to Caruso -- why, we're never quite sure, but we get the impression that Jumior is impressed with the other man's workmanlike attitude. Cage hams it up playing Junior, which in retrospect may have been better than trying to play the guy *totally* straight.
Or something like that. The movie has its hands full with its tricky plot, and hasn't got much time left to give Junior real motives. And yet, somehow, the movie finds the time to do some nice things. The scenes between Caruso and Jackson start off ugly, but then the two men learn they have a lot in common -- and have scenes where they actually *talk* to each other instead of exchange token insults or complements. It's nicely done.
Unfortunately, all of that gets flushed away in the movie's climax, a mess
of thriller/chase cliches that wraps things up a little too neatly. What
this movie needed was for Price to sit down and do a more heartless version.
Hell, based on having read THE WANDERERS and CLOCKERS, maybe that was the
one he originally wrote. Sad.
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