Kiss The Girls (1997)

I had seen Kiss The Girls some years ago, or had at least seen enough of it to know how everything played out. And then I forgot everything that happened in it. Or so I thought. As the opening credits started to play out, I remembered one or two important plot points, making my revisit a fairly disappointing and pointless experience.

It's not that this is a bad film. It's just a textbook example of this kind of '90s thriller. They may have tried to get a bit darker and edgier after the success of Seven, almost exactly halfway through the decade, but the basic ingredients were the same. You had a smart detective who could think more steps ahead than the other officers around him (and, yes, it was more often than not a male character in the lead), you had a couple of decent players in supporting roles to provide a red herring or two, and also a main villain, and you had a female who either escaped the killer or assisted the detective, or indeed both. Most, if not all, of these tropes can be found in this film, and in films such as The Bone Collector, Color Of Night, Insomnia, Striking Distance (Willis again), and in a few others. The tropes could be subverted for erotic thrillers (e.g. the detective often being the character a couple of steps behind everyone else), and there are an equal number of movies that are notably different (mainly with female leads, such as The Silence Of The Lambs, Copycat, and Blue Steel), but you get the gist of what I am saying.

Morgan Freeman plays Detective Alex Cross, a forensic psychologist who becomes very personally involved in a major case when his niece goes missing. She is one of a number of girls taken by a criminal who goes by the name of Casanova. Helped by local law enforcement (Bill Nunn and Cary Elwes are here, Brian Cox is the Chief), the investigation doesn't seem to be moving forward until one of Casanova's most recent victims (Ashley Judd) manages to escape from his lair. She's determined to help bring her captor to justice, but can she trust her own memories of that traumatic episode?

Based on the best-seller by James Patterson, Kiss The Girls succeeds most in the casting department. The script by David Klass is servicable enough, admirably ticking all of those boxes mentioned above, but a lesser cast would, I suspect, have left this struggling to find an audience. Freeman and Judd are the leads, the former trying to piece together the puzzle while the latter uses her special position to help the investigation maintain momentum. Cox, Nunn, and Elwes all do well enough in their roles, and there's also a small, but impressive, turn from Tony Goldwyn and an even smaller role for the always-welcome Jeremy Piven.

The second theatrical feature for director Gary Fleder (who had previously done some TV work before delivering the highly enjoyable Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead), this is a safe and competent film that creeps close to darker territory at times before deciding not to wade in any further. That fault may lie with the source material, Patterson is certainly one of those prolific crime writers I can imagine does so well because he doesn't scare away all of his readers but I am sure it's easier to describe something grisly on the page than it is to show it onscreen, but it's a shame that neither Klass nor Fleder decided to push things a bit. Even the one moment that shows Alex Cross being affected by someone who gets under his skin hints at missed opportunities, considering how personal the case is for him (something all too easy to forget for most of the runtime).

I don't think I ever saw Along Came A Spider, which sees Freeman returning to the role, and I know I haven't yet seen Alex Cross. I'll be marking them off the list in the next few weeks.

6/10

You can buy a double-bill of Freeman Alex Cross movies here.
Americans can get a blu here.