Kiss of Death (1995)

Jimmy Kilmartin (David Caruso) is trying to stay clean in Queens. He and his wife Bev (Helen Hunt) have a baby. His cousin Ronnie Gannon (Michael Rapaport) pulls him back into working for Little Junior Brown (Nicolas Cage). Jimmy is arrested. He doesn't rat out Little Junior and in exchange, Bev is taken care of. Bev is forced to work for Ronnie as he cheats her out of the money. Big Junior Brown (Philip Baker Hall) is Junior's father and they own the strip club Baby Cakes. Ronnie gets the recovering alcoholic Bev drunk and she wakes up in his bed the next morning. In shock, she drives off and dies in a car accident. During the funeral, Bev's sister Rosie (Kathryn Erbe) tells Jimmy the truth. To get Ronnie, Jimmy rats out the crew except Ronnie. Believing Ronnie is the actual rat, Little Junior has him killed. Year later with parole coming up, police detective Frank Zioli (Stanley Tucci) threatens to out Jimmy to Little Junior. Jimmy is forced to be an informant on Little Junior. With Big Junior dead, Little Junior is the new boss and the police is actually targeting his business partner Omar (Ving Rhames). Meanwhile, Jimmy has remarried to Rosie and trying to carve out a normal life.Nicolas Cage steals this movie for both good and bad. His character is unforgettable. However, it's so big that the movie loses the thread of an intense noir thriller. David Caruso is fine and so is almost everybody else. Michael Rapaport continues his jittery sleazy bad-influence character. The story is a little long trying to do too much. For example, it would cost nothing to keep Bev around for the whole movie. With a couple of tweaks, Bev and Rosie's characters could have been combined. With some simplification and compression, this would a much tighter thriller.

Barbet Schroeder has not had what anyone would call a very fruitful American period. In between the Wilderesque black comedy masterwork REVERSAL OF FORTUNE and the pedestrian MURDER BY NUMBERS came this in-name-only remake of Henry Hathaway's 1947 classic. David Caruso, possessing none of the presence or gravitas it takes to carry a film, stars as a con trying to go straight but is tripped up by his involvement with degenerate gangster Nicolas Cage (as Little Junior Brown -- that name being one of the few clever things in the film). Schroeder directs the film at a brisk clip but it's all for naught; the material is just nothing special. Appearances by Helen Hunt, Stanley Tucci (as a self-serving prosecutor), Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Rappaport add very little.

I'm going to keep this short for posterity sake if you like thrillers this movie is for you. If you like movies this movie is for you. Not only is the story amazing, that goes without saying, but it's the little subtleties that really make the difference; the directing in terms of the mise en scene present in divine, the lighting throughout is spectacular. All and all the The Kiss of Death is a great film, containing great acting, particularly by Nicolas Cage. Speaking of thrillers and Nic Cage he's got a new one coming out called Trespass that looks pretty cool. Check out the trailer then thank me for changing your life. http://bitly.com/qN22Cm

I think the best way to approach this movie is on its own terms rather than as a remake of the 1940s film. In any case, it merely follows the general story outline of the earlier picture. What makes it altogether new is Richard Price's screenplay, Barbet Schroeder's direction, a great lineup of actors, and location shooting in some of New York City's seediest and most squalid areas.Along with the great locations, what really provides the atmosphere is Price's writing. Once again he shows his down to the ground knowledge of the characters, mannerisms, and lingo of the creeps and hoodlums in the big city underworld, and the law enforcement people who deal with them. And there is also Price's trademark offbeat humor.While the earlier film gave us Richard Widmark as a really scary psycho, in this later film Richard Price has given us Little Junior Brown, a bulked-up killer with a child's mind and an abiding faith in the nostrums of New Age philosophy.What a delight when Little Junior, fresh from committing murder, asks our hero to take the next day off so they can get together and "talk about life and stuff"! Or when he urges him to settle on an acronym that will give shape to his identity. (Little Junior's is B-A-D--for "Balls, Attitude, Direction.") Nicholas Cage is often accused of playing over the top, but in the case of Little Junior, over the top is the way to go.There are also good performances by Stanley Tucci and Samuel L. Jackson. Tucci excels in portraying charming snakes. When he leers and sneers, it is impossible to keep from watching him.This movie was really very enjoyable.