Kiss of Death

• Cert:
• Cat.no: 08782 DVD
• Running time: 96 minutes
• Year: 1995
• Pressing: 2001
• Region(s): 2, PAL
• Chapters: 15 plus extras
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: 11 langauges available
• Widescreen: 1.85:1
• 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
• Macrovision: Yes
• Disc Format: DVD 9
• Price: £15.99
• Extras: Trailers, Interviews, Featurette

Director:

Barbet Schroeder

(Barfly, Before and After, Desperate Measures, Fool Proof, Kiss of Death, Our Lady of the Assassins, Reversal of Fortune, Single White Female)

Producer:

Screenplay:

Music:

Cast:

Jimmy Kilmartin: David Caruso
Calvin: Samuel L Jackson
Little Junior Brown: Nicolas Cage
Bev Kilmartin: Helen Hunt
Rosie d’Amico: Kathryn Erbe
Frank Zioli: Stanley Tucci
Ronnie: Michael Rapaport
Omar: Ving Rhames
Big Junior Brown: Philip Baker Hall
Jack Gold: Anthony Heald

A remake of the 1947 film, Kiss of Death, it’s difficult to get across how events come to be in the movie because it would give away surprise parts of the plot that occur.

It’s safe to say that two years after getting out of the clink, Jimmy Kilmartin (NYPD Blue‘s David Caruso) is lured back into a job to help associate and mechanic Ronnie (Michael Rapaport) by moving a stack of stolen cars from A to B otherwise asthmatic master criminal Little Junior Brown (Nicolas Cage) will start measuring him up for a body bag.

Everything goes wrong and after three further years in jail Jimmy’s only way out is to help the law capture Little Junior, the former’s path into the seedy underworld only smoothed over by having separate personal tragedies affect them both.

As well as the three principal leads, there’s a cracking supporting cast with Helen Hunt as Jimmy’s wife, Stanley Tucci as Calvin’s superior, Michael Rapaport as the aforementioned Ronnie, Philip Baker Hall as Junior’s father and Pulp Fiction‘s Ving Rhames as associate of Junior, Omar. Sadly, not enough is made of this collective talent and as for the film overall, it’s really builds an atmosphere in the first half, most of which is carried through to the finale.

One surprising thing is that I did expect to see Caruso appearing in more films after this one but he’s done thing that’s hit the big time since.

“No thanks. I’ve already eaten.”

There’s a serious problem with the picture. Like the first series of the remake of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), the picture looks like someone’s cropped the sides slightly to a 14:9 ratio and then just stretched it out sideways. This anomoly can be partially corrected if your widescreen TV has a “Just” or “Super Zoom” function (if you have it you’ll know what it does so I won’t explain here, but in short it makes people’s heads look more normal in this case) and it should’ve been spotted in quality control. It also shimmers fairly often and this shouldn’t happen. At least the film is presented in its original 1.85:1 ratio and is anamorphic.

The sound is in Dolby Digital 5.1 and is fine, but apart from nightclub scenes and an early shootout, there’s not much in the air for spectacular scenes.

The extras are a mere 3-minute 4:3 Trailer, a 4½-minute Featurette that just comprises of the usual film clips and soundbites from the cast and crew and 7 Interview clips from the same people that are so short as to prove fairly worthless as they run for between one and two minutes.

There are just a mere 15 chapters like many of Fox’s recent back catalogue titles which isn’t enough, the menus are static and silent and the subtitles come in 11 languages: English (for the deaf and hard of hearing), Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese and Swedish.

FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS


OVERALL