KISS OR KILL
A film review by David Sidwell
Rating (0 TO 10): 8.5 aka: *** out of ****
Australia, 1997
Rated MA in Australia (Medium Level Violence, Adult Themes, Medium Level Coarse Lanuage)
Cast: Frances O'Connor, Matt Day, Chris Haywood, Barry Otto, Andrew S. Gilbert, Barry Langrishe and Max Cullen.
Director: Bill Bennett Producers: Bill Bennett and Jennifer Bennet Written by: Bill Bennett Director of Photography: Malcolm McCulloch Editor: Henry Dangar
It must be her.
She sleep walks; unconsciously and subconsciously re-enacting an horrific event she witnessed as a child.
But no. Think about it. It must be him. He's got the knife. He's got the short fuse and has blown up a few times already.
These are just some of the virtual deductions that you find yourself contemplating as you sit there in that darkened picture house, trying to untangle KISS OR KILL.
She is Nikki (O'Connor). He is Al (Day). They are lovers on the run in the outback. It's just the two of them. Yet, people they meet - literally in the middle of nowhere - have a nasty tendency to be murdered. Is it him or her doing it? This Nullabor Plain has thousands of miles of nothing ; except fear, suspicion and radioactive dirt.
KISS OR KILL is a very good piece of filmmaking. The use of jump-cut edits adds to the sense of things going wrong. Time is compressed. We see the start (cut) middle (cut) then end of a scene. What would have taken 30 seconds in real-life takes only 10 or 15 on the screen. In this movie this technique works; it serves to increase the feelings of urgency and tension.
Day and O'Connor are hot property and the click between them is so loud as to be deafening. Improvisation played a role during the making of the film. As Nikki and Al start to suspect each other of doing the killings, this technique kicks in particularly well; their interactions have a real edge to them. Uncertainly, shock and confusion rule.
With these two representing the current New Wave of young Australian cinema, Bill Bennett has assembled a virtual who's who of the previous 'generation' of actors as supports. Chris Haywood, Barry Otto and Max Cullen mostly hover admirably in the background but add in valuable little pieces to the puzzle.
If you like modern, well crafted, intelligent, thriller.roadmovie.romance films, you are in for an exciting drive.
Copyright © 1997 David Sidwell
David Sidwell
(Melbourne, Australia)
e-mail: dsidwell@connexus.apana.org.au
WWW: http://connexus.apana.org.au/~dsidwell
Work: http://www.midcomp.com.au (AS/400 & Other Midrange Software & Services)
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