Directed by Gary Fleder
Adapted from a novel by James Patterson.
Starring
Morgan Freeman
Ashley Judd
Carey Elwes
Brian Cox
Jay O. Sanders
Alex MacArthur
Richard T. Jones
Bill Nunn
Jeremy Piven
Tony Goldwyn
. . .
"This guy's a collector."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
Kiss the Girls is an effective serial killer thriller with an intriguing super power: it's basically review proof. I'm not saying it's a perfect film. It just defeats the whole endeavor of film criticism. Not because the filmmakers intended to stick it to film critics or criticism as a field, nothing so intentional . . . it's just that its very purpose and construction renders such projects moot.
Kiss the Girls began life as an 'airport paperback,' a book that you buy at the airport gift shop to read while flying, and then you pretty much never read it again. Or maybe you bought it at a grocery store back when they used to stock books, or at a long extinct drugstore chain like Phar-Mor or Eckard's, or at Walmart or Target or even a Waldenbooks. You read it over a few nights, thought it was pretty good, and then you never read it again. Not because it's bad or anything. All plot. Compelling technical details to show the author did their homework. Everyone loves a diligent student. No flowery Proustian introspection. No impenetrable postmodern gamesmanship. No arch satire to make you question what you're reading and give you a headache. No finger-wagging moralism or social commentary. Just the meat and potatoes, please. You only read it the once because it was designed to be both wholly absorbing and totally disposable once consumed.
Back in the days of ubiquitous used book stores books like this took up lots of space, at least until the proprietors got wise and stopped taking 'em for trade credit. Boy did that piss off the greedy retirees and doctors carting in their cast-offs with broken spines thinking they were gonna take advantage of the trade-in credit system.
Now, these airport paperbacks were not as immovable as the formula romance novels, but they were still a space hog, and the volume of wasted retail territory very likely contributed to the demise of those used bookstores that couldn't or wouldn't say no to the bargain hunters obsessed with the idea that their leisure reading waste could form the basis of some sort of bookish barter economy. This is one of those strange fantasies of that era of ubiquitous used book stores within which some people dwelled at the end of history. Reading didn't have to be hard. Fiction isn't some arcane art, but a formula. All problems could be resolved by an intrepid FBI agent or, even better, an FBI profiler-which is basically a scientific mind reader. Even though these books gave the impression that serial killers were hiding inside every last bush, that anyone could be a scheming psychopath hiding behind a mask of normalcy, everything was going to be just fine at the same time. If only used bookstore owners could pay their utilities with a wheelbarrow full of brokeback paperbacks. Alas, 'twas not the case.
So, Kiss the Girls as a literary construct was designed to be read quickly, enjoyed, and cast aside so you could read the next one-either the next book from the same author-James Patterson in this case-or another in the genre by a different author: Tom Clancy, Stephen King, David Baldacci, Michael Slade, Richard Preston&Lincoln Child, John Grisham, etc. You could mix and match 'em as you please! Zero sweat! You don't need a background in critical literary theory or postmodern approaches to late capitalist liberal subjectivities or feminism or even be good at math to jump into the airport paperback game. Ready to read, plug'n'play, zero fuss and even less muss. They certainly don't need to be curated or sorted by a reviewer or critic. I mean, there really isn't anything to review or interpret. It's all there on the face of things. I won't say that the subtext has been dialled to zero, but it's well below eleven.
No, the only thing which bears critical scrutiny is the business side of things, the economics, the publishing machine that rewards standarized, easily consumable book product. There's an academic paper for you, there’s a magnificent graduate thesis-hell, I betcha if you wrote that sumbitch, why, all those extinct used bookstores would spring right back from the grave!
Yeah. It could happen. Someone needs to get on this. Not me, I got a whole stack of James Patterson books to get through, so no help here-
Kiss the Girls the movie of the book is about a perfect adaptation of the whole airport paperback thing as you can get: it's slick, it's technically proficient, it doesn't fuck about with artsy indulgences, it's got plot twists, you watch it once, and you probably don't ever need to watch it again. I had no problem whatsoever watching it twice to write this, but I probably only needed to watch it the once, now that I think about it.
Morgan Freeman is terrific as 'forensic psychologist' Alex Cross, a pistol packing headshrinker who specializes in talking down potential suicides and hostage takers as well as interpreting crime scenes for insights into the misfiring brain signals of sick fuck serial killers. Alex Cross is who Dr. Loomis from Halloween dreams of becoming when he grows up: calm, cool, collected, convincing, and quick on the draw. Freeman makes this inherently absurd character compelling and even vulnerable in a few scenes.
Cross is after a serial killer/kidnapper/rapist known as Casanova, who captures women, tortures them, and murders them. Cross gets drawn in to this case when his niece goes missing in Durham, North Carolina. Casanova is one of these gimmicky serial killers who loves to taunt the cops with edeglordy letters and insinuations. In one scene, we see him in his masked costume descending a staircase in mysterious shadows to menace a victim. Casanova leans his head to the side just so that director Gary Fleder can give a shout out to Michael Myers, which was a nice touch.
One of Casanova's victims escapes from his private torture dungeon that's located in the middle of a North Carolina forest and makes her way back to civilization. She becomes the key to hunting down Casanova and ending his reign of terror. She's very well played by Ashley Judd, but I kinda feel like she was left with not much to do until the final act.
The supporting cast consists of people who all look like they could be killers hiding behind facades of normalcy:
Brian Cox as the blustery good ol' boy police chief, sucking on his pipe, doing a Foghorn Leghorn Southern accent, and warning Cross to stay outta his kitchen!
Cary Elwes as a cop, who seems like a too obvious choice to be the killer-it's the dude from Robin Hood: Men in Tights fer Chrissakes!
Jay O. Sanders as a colleague of Cross's who has kind of a creepy stare. What's his deal?
Maybe the most amusing bit of casting is Alex MacArthur who I always remember as the skincrawling serial killer from William Friedkin's Rampage. Deep cut, Fleder, deep cut . . .
I don't think I've ever seen Bill Nunn in a villain role, or Jeremy Piven for that matter, so we can probably rule those guys out as suspects.
If I told who the killer is then there's little point in watching the movie. Sure, it's well made, and the presentation of the masked Casanova killer is stylish and creepy, but the full fun can only be had if you go in blindfolded. Kiss the Girls is the sort of film spoiler culture evolved to protect.
You watch it. You're like, "Oh, that's how it all fits together. That was pretty neat!"
In some ways the film version improves upon the paperback version in that the actors here are quite good. They imbue the archetypes-or cliches to use a less pretentious term-with interesting presences and personalities. Morgan Freeman even has a chance to play the vulnerability of Cross when he has to admit to some serious mistakes to his colleague. The R-rating helps. The language is adequately rough. When a character admits to fucking up they say, "I fucked up," which I appreciated. Back in the 1990s television cop worship shows did not allow their protagonists to speak as adults. You could only do that in the movies. I appreciate this about Kiss the Girls.
The level of violence is sufficiently gnarly without going full splatter. Casanova is a nasty piece of work, to be sure, and the film version doesn't water it down.
Great set designs. Casanova's dungeon ends up having disturbing historical resonances.
The final confrontation between Cross and Casanova was cleverly contrived, and the movie doesn't linger much past that point.
No need to worry about mid credits or after credits bullshit. Kiss the Girls doesn’t lack confidence. You'll find no trace of franchise envy here. Once the tale has been told you are free to exit the theater into the mysterious night.
