Kiss of Death (1995)

You won't be disappointed!

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Fantastic!

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

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.

This movie is terrible. David Caruso's acting was atrocious along with that of Samuel L. Jackson and especially Nicolas Cage. Ving Rhames and Helen Hunter were marginal at best. Everyone over-acted with the exception of Caruso who just didn't seem to be acting at all since it appeared he merely memorized his lines and not the emotion with which they should be spoken.The Asst District Attorney seemed to be the only role played somewhat correctly. I would never watch the movie again.Terrible movie.

Everyone agrees that the casting was marque. And that it has great source material. But I feel it gets a bum rap with critics. And Nicolas Cage was exactly what the film needed. I thought so then and I think so now. Color, flash, and style. Something out of the ordinary to give it some desperately needed weight. And Cage makes weight. Literally. That is the strongest look I had seen since Stallone did "First Blood, Part II". Cage is a physical bull and it's impressive. I wouldn't have recognized him if I hadn't seen the trailer with his name on it beforehand. If you never saw this, see it. For no other reason than to be scared of Nic Cage. I was.

You want to know the best joke I've heard lately? The Kiss of Death remake. Despite having great source material to work from (that being Henry Hathaway's 1947 original), Barbet Schroeder's film might as well have been a comedy, as the level of incompetence on display really is mind blowing. The film features a whole range of well known stars, and almost every single one of them is heinously miscast. Nicholas Cage delivers the silliest role of his career as the babyish gangster 'Little Junior'. Cage's character is this film's answer to Richard Widmark's Tommy Udo, but unlike Widmark; Cage just can't do the extreme psychotic, and succeeds only in making a fool of himself. Samuel L. Jackson isn't given room to breathe, while Helen Hunt, Michael Rapaport and Ving Rhames are entirely wasted. Perhaps the biggest casting mistake was giving David Caruso the lead role. It's hard not to laugh while he's trying to look hard, and the ginger actor looks completely ridiculous throughout. The only actor in the entire film that has been well cast is Anthony Heald (Silence of the Lambs' Dr Chilton), who has a very small role as a lawyer. Kiss of the Death is one of the clearest examples of casting with the poster in mind that I've ever seen.The plot follows an unlucky guy who gets arrested after taking 'one last job' as a favour to his friend. While on the inside, he is asked to rat out his accomplices, and but won't. However, he changes his mind when it comes to the end of his sentence (oh yes). What made the original great was that the story was tight, and by concentrating on just a handful of characters; the audience was able to care for their plight. This movie doesn't benefit from that, as the film needs a whole load of characters so that a load of big names can star, and it harms the film as the whole thing is far too convoluted. Not much thought has gone into any scene in this film either, and certain plot threads seem to come out of nowhere; the lead character's relationship with the babysitter being a good example of an idea that the film simply throws at you. You really need to stretch your imagination with this movie, as several things don't make sense; and the fact that all in all, this film is bad ensures that stretching the imagination isn't easy. The ending is similar to that of the original, but here we don't get the impression that it's come about as a result of the characters; and Samuel L. Jackson's last moment on screen throws mud in the eye of the dark tone that a story like this should have. All I can say is that Kiss of Death is actually an apt name for this film, as Barbet Schroeder and co have embraced a good idea and killed it.