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Dom Robinson reviews
His only hope is the woman who got away.
Paramount
- Cert:
- Cat.no: PHE 8089
- Running time: 111 minutes
- Year: 1997
- Pressing: 2001
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 26 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English, German
- Subtitles: 15 languages available
- Widescreen: 2.35:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Trailer
Director:
- Gary Fleder
(Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead)
Producers:
- David Brown and Joe Wizan
Screenplay
- David Klass
Music:
- Mark Isham
Cast:
- Alex Cross: Morgan Freeman
Kate McTiernan: Ashley Judd
Nick Ruskin: Cary Elwes
Will Rudolph: Tony Goldwyn
Chief Hatfield: Brian Cox
Kiss The Girls is a film about eight kidnapped women: all beautiful, all talented and all in danger of having their lives cut short if police detective Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman) and key witness Kate McTiernan (Ashley Judd) can’t locate the elusive “collector” who calls himself Casanova. From the Deep South to the California coast and back, the hunt is on in this provocative race-against-time suspenser based on the best-selling novel by James Patterson.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? Alas, this so-called thriller is about as gripping as a non-stick frying pan. The film tries too hard to be a sequel to Se7en – ripping off Silence of the Lambs along the way – and fails miserably. It also rips it off by trying to be dark in appearance and the case being solved is also the last one for Freeman’s character. Hmm…
And of the rest of the cast? We’re given to believe that Ashley Judd, who positively smouldered in Heat and A Time To Kill, is a no-nonsense surgeon who can kick-box her way out of any trouble, but it’s a shame she doesn’t use it before things get way out of hand. Zero tension is created in an early scene: You can tell long before the crucial moment when Ashley is attacked in her own home and the obvious is played to the full when she runs downstairs and stupidly runs into the strategically-placed fishtank at the bottom of the stairs. It’s her house so she’d be perfectly aware of it. If the scriptwriters had used their brain, they’d probably have had her kick it down.
Another laughable scene comes when Ashley is locked up and calls out to the other encarcerated girls, resulting in what sounds like an impromptu Alcoholics Anonymous meeting as they each divulge their full name and length of lock-up, for those who can remember.
The once-good Brian Cox has made some odd choices of late, playing the bad guy in Hollywood actioners The Long Kiss Goodnight and the Freeman-co-starrer Chain Reaction as well as a police chief in this and the surprisingly good, Desperate Measures. In the long line of cheesy roles, here he just seems to ham it up as much as he can before collecting his pay cheque and getting out.
Overall, take every ounce of what made Se7en great, take it out and replace it with the obvious and you have “Kiss The Girls”. There’ll be nothing you haven’t seen before when you sit down to watch a film which plays like a TV movie on Channel 5 – just replace Ashley Judd with Donna Mills (!)
Use of slo-mo filming and bassy music score to ‘over-egg the pudding’ in terms of an effective music score, make it far less effective than it should be.
Sod’s law sometimes dictates that it’s the worst films which will have the best picture quality. Not this time though: something clearly went wrong in the DVD, since there’s plenty of print flecks throughout the film, some white flecks and artifacts from time to time. At least the good news is that the picture is framed at the cinema ratio of 2.35:1, so the well-composed scenes get a good look-in here, as opposed to the cramped look they’ll have on the fullscreen video.
In the soundmix is an over-use of echoing loud gunshots and, at other times, camera clicks, thus cheapening the effect – definitely a case of less would be more, thus is loses a point for this over-indulgence.
There are 26 chapters which is a decent amount, but the only extra is 16:9 non-anamorphic trailer and the menus are silent and static. Subtitles are available in 15 languages ; English (and hard of hearing), Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish and Turkish.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.