Kiss of Death
In a way, Barbet Schroeder’s “Kiss of Death” fits in beautifully with the original notions of film noir that drove the genre, and films like its 1947 predecessor. This is not a prestige film, but B-movie filmmaking. The performances aren’t subtle, the story is either too simple or too complicated, and the ending doesn’t exactly end in a way where the future is assured, even if it wants to act like it. This was one of my first films from the genre, and it entertained me; I’d never mistake it for art, though.
Once I was old enough to see R-rated films without parental supervision, the floodgates were opened for me to go to movies like this and “Lost Highway” and other contemporary noirs on my own. Even if the films weren’t great, those experiences still meant something to me, and this one did more than most. One reason for that is the Nicolas Cage performance as Little Junior Brown, another is the Trevor Jones score. This was a big favorite score for me in that early time of falling down the rabbit hole of film music, and it’s far from the last of Jones’s scores I would listen to on a regular basis.
I don’t remember how closely this film follows the 1947 one, although I know Little Junior is a far cry from Richard Widmark’s iconic villain. Richard Price’s screenplay makes it work for modern audiences, though, as Jimmy Kilmartin (David Caruso) is a thief trying to go straight for his wife, Bev (Helen Hunt), and their kid, Corinna. A knock on the door changes all that; Jimmy’s cousin Ronnie (Michael Rapaport) needs him to drive for him. Two hours, easy money. Of course that’s not how it goes, and it’s not long before Jimmy is back in prison, and Ronnie’s preying on Bev under the guise of “generosity.” After a tragedy, Jimmy changes his tune, and a few years later, he’s out and trying to help bring down Little Junior Brown. Nothing will ever be easy, though, because that’s not how film noir works.
Schroeder was coming off of an Oscar winner (“Reversal of Fortune”) and a hit thriller (“Single White Female”), so working from a screenplay by an acclaimed author and screenwriter (Price did “The Color of Money” and “Sea of Love,” and would follow this up with “Clockers” and “Ransom”) seemed like a slam dunk. He also had a hot commodity in Caruso in the lead; Caruso famously left “N.Y.P.D. Blue” after the first season to turn to movies, and few choices were as disastrous- it would take later TV success on “N.C.I.S. Miami” to make him a star again. He’s a decent choice for Jimmy, especially if you’re looking at this as a true ’40s noir update- he has the look and attitude for a down-on-his-luck protagonist. He’s outshown by the stacked supporting cast, though, as not just Cage but Samuel L. Jackson, Ving Rhames, Stanley Tucci, Rapaport, Hunt and Kathryn Erbe (as Corinna’s babysitter, and later, Jimmy’s wife) all score critical moments, and make Caruso have to ramp things up. With all the machismo thrown around this felt like the noir version of “Con Air”- it ramps the formula up to 11 and makes no apologies for it. (Cage also has a bunny to deliver in this.)
Cage as Little Junior Brown deserves his own paragraph. At this point, all I knew of Cage as a performer was “Guarding Tess” and “It Could Happen to You,” so I wasn’t aware of what manic Cage was like. Little Junior changed that. I would later be diagnosed with asthma myself, and let me just say, it’s hilarious how wrong Cage shows how you have to use your inhaler for it to be effective when he has to puff on it. He’s had plenty of great performances after this, and even before it, where this doesn’t even rate on a top 10 list of his work, but when one of the first things you see of a character is him dead lifting a stripper, you know you’re in for a treat. He’s ice cold when he wants to be, and he’s nuts when he needs to be, and when he tells you his acronym for how to focus himself is “Balls. Attitude. Direction.”, you believe it. He’s a terrific, insane villain, and I kind of love that this was my gateway to that side of him we all know and love.
“Kiss of Death” feels sillier and sillier with how dense it gets the more you watch it. Unlike “The Big Sleep,” having so many characters and motivations that you lose sight of what matters isn’t a plus here, especially since what matters here is Jimmy’s ability to live a straight, normal life. The ending to this doesn’t feel earned in any way. But Trevor Jones’s score leaves you feeling like it does. That’s part of why the film, however it falls short of the greats, still is memorable, and something I feel like I can return to again and again over the years.
