Kiss Of Death (1995)

Although it doesn't slavishly follow the plot of the original movie, this neo-noir from director Barbet Schroeder does a good job of hitting a number of familiar key points while ensuring that everything feels in line with a slightly grittier and more modern approach to the story. Writer Richard Price did this more than once throughout the 1990s, with varying degrees of success, and his complete body of work illustrates just how good he is at crafting tales of tension, threats, and troubling dilemmas.

David Caruso plays Jimmy Kilmartin, an ex-convict trying to go straight. Unfortunately, he is roped into a job by his wayward cousin (Michael Rapaport), and it isn’t long until things go sour. A cop (Samuel L. Jackson) is nearly killed, Jimmy is caught, and this leads to a spiral and unfortunate fate for his wife (Helen Hunt). Knowing that others are benefiting from him taking the rap, Jimmy is eventually convinced to become an informant, looking to help police get enough evidence to arrest Little Junior Brown (Nicolas Cage).

Kiss Of Death is both helped and hindered by its cast. Cage is a definite highlight, whether he’s bench-pressing a young woman to show off to others around him or getting ready to have some beaten up while listening to House Of Pain. He heads up a brilliant assortment of supporting turns, including the aforementioned Hunt, Rapaport, and Jackson, as well as Stanley Tucci, Ving Rhames, Kathryn Erbe, Anthony Heald, and Philip Baker Hall. Unfortunately, this is another film that should have put anyone aside from Caruso in the lead role. He’s rarely been a good leading man in movies, with his turn in Session 9 being a notable exception, and this film would benefit from almost anyone else being cast in the central role. Sorry, I cannot quite put my finger on the problem, but Caruso just doesn’t emanate any decent amount of charisma or watchability.

Clocking in at almost the same runtime as the original, Price does a good job of moving pieces into place for the finale while also allowing room for a few scenes that just flesh out the characters. Things never feel rushed, yet it never feels too slow or indulgent either. The end result may be far from a perfect film, but all of the ingredients are mixed in perfect amounts. Having Schroeder at the helm seems guaranteed to keep things from excelling, he is a competent pair of hands, but no more than that, so it’s a real bonus that we got this script married up with this cast. There are so many ways this could have gone horribly wrong, and I imagine some big fans of the original will still disapprove, but I am pleasantly surprised that it ended up so enjoyable and effective.

You might be put off by Caruso. You might be put off by Cage (some people still don’t appreciate his brilliance). You might even be put off just by the fact that this is a remake. I would advise you to get over those prejudices and give it a go. You should end up having a good time in the company of some bad people.

7/10

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Noir November: Sea Of Love (1989)

Sex sells. Everyone knows that. So adding eroticism to thrillers was always a way to spice things up, grab the attention of viewers, and make a moderate film into a moderate success. Add one or two big names (in this case, Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin) and you had a winning formula. Until, of course, it started to lose. Because there's not really any such thing as a winning formula in the movie business, unless you count the two main ways to make profit: either spend so little that profit is guaranteed or spend so much that the movie gets to eventually make profit by the sheer inescapability of the brand.

Harold Becker directs this slick slice of hokum, and the premise is as fun as it is silly. There's a killer on the loose, someone targeting men who have advertised in a lonely hearts column. Al Pacino teams up with John Goodman to catch the killer, and they decide that the best way to get their perp is to, yep, put an ad in the same lonely hearts column. A number of women reply to the ad, with Ellen Barkin being one of them. Pacino starts to warm to Barkin, even as it becomes more and more obvious that she's the best suspect they've had since starting the investigation.

Writer Richard Price really just goes through the motions here, as does director Harold Becker, but viewers are lucky enough to have the material lifted, ever so slightly, by the great cast. Pacino and Barkin may not be the top two people on your list of folks you wanted to see make out with one another, but they don't do too bad in the sexual chemistry department. In fact, the two central characters really make a good couple, with all of the baggage and cynicism that they have. The rest is all as you'd expect it to be. There's the kind of soundtrack that you'd expect, with the title song making frequent appearances, and one or two decent red herrings on the way to the relatively tense finale. Well, when I say "relatively tense" I actually mean "not tense at all, but still entertaining enough nonetheless".

As for the rest of the cast, Goodman puts in the kind of solid supporting turn that he's been doing for most of his career. He doesn't really steal all of his scenes, but he certainly leaves an impression. John Spencer and Richard Jenkins are both fellow members of the police force, with the latter involved in a couple of great run-ins with Pacino, due to the tension caused by him now living with Al's ex-wife. William Hickey and Michael Rooker do well with fairly small roles, and Christine Estabrook and Patricia Barry also make the most of their screentime, both playing different women putting themselves out there in the world of dating.

Certainly not as good as more delightfully sleazy entries in the subgenre, Sea Of Love is passable enough, mainly thanks to the cast, and I'm sure Pacino completists will be able to stomach it on their way through his filmography.

6/10

http://www.amazon.com/Sea-Love-Collectors-Al-Pacino/dp/B00008CMRK/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1415133173&sr=1-1&keywords=sea+of+love