Kiss or Kill

Day, Barry Langrishe, Chris Haywood, Andrew S. Gilbert, Max Cullen, Barry Otto. First impression is another road movie with two young lovers doing the Badlands. Director Bill Bennett is not that stupid. He has managed to add a twist in the genre, adding that extra spice. Yes, the fugitives are young and beautiful, with personality to keep one interested. But do they really know each other. Wherever they spend the night, a throat is sliced. Who could it be? Do they know each other that well? The entire movie is based on our perception of others. Do we really know much about our close ones. Even the detectives, (on the young lovers trail), have a moment over breakfast when one reveals a past the other never knew about. And for the general public, there is the character Zipper, an ex-footballer admired by everyone. But a video tape in the possession of our heroes reveals his inner evil. Matt and Frances do a fine job in a movie without a script, (they worked on a plot outline and the rest just happened). The great moments occur with the detectives played by Haywood and Gilbert, two skilled actors who bounce off each other so well that you sometimes feel as if you are watching a documentary. The technics used with the jump-cuts is an old one but works here. Just glad they didn't give us a picturesque of the Australian outback.

The attention-grabbing beginning of this movie finds two scam artists, having accidentally killed a victim, stumbling on the possibility of blackmailing a football star, and setting in motion a quirky road movie with hints of black humour.

I have to say, this sketchy synopsis recalls the type of plotline the Coen brothers might use. This is slightly misleading - the film is darker, less gimmicky and ultimately less fun than standard Coen brothers fare - but nonetheless the film does share several of the brothers' failings - noticeably an inability to create a consistent tone or convincing psychologies for the lead characters. We know the most important character suffered severe trauma as a child, yet we learn little about her other than that, and her boyfriend seems an even bigger mystery.

Also, to illustrate the problems the film has with tone, the film has noirish themes, but has incongruously bright sunny photography. It also contains one brilliantly funny sequence, in which a cop finds he knows his partner less well than he thought, but frankly this scene looks like it comes from another movie.

However, the film is always watchable. It does look attractive, even if its main stylistic tic - continual jump cuts, presumably in homage to Godard - does jar after a while. Moreover, a brash, confident central performance from Frances O'Connor definitely holds the attention, and I did feel that I cared for her basically hard-to-like character.

Although the film is only a partial success, it still looks like the type of film that could develop a cult following.

Surprisingly, the genre hasn't been worn down to the nub, despite dozens upon dozens of examples pointing to the contrary.

Annoying, overused, Scorsesean jump cuts aside, "Kiss or Kill" has enough good things going for it to make it the best Aussie import I've come across in a great long while.

The director is Bill Bennett, whose other noteworthy effort was a Sandra Bullock picture that wasn't really worth bragging about (has anyone made a Sandra Bullock picture worth bragging about?) He's not too keen as a director, really, cross-cutting scenes that haven't got anything to do with each other, overdoing the jump cuts to force a free-and-easy atmosphere onto the proceedings, but as a scenarist he's excellent. The plot begins like any other ordinary "Bonnie and Clyde" xerox, but it flows free from there, as if Bennett just let the characters take over, rather than the plot conventions.

The acting, uniformly, is pretty close to fantastic. There's Frances O'Conner as the fast-moving but slow-thinking Nikki, who as a child (opening sequence) sees something so horrible at her home that it's no wonder she chose a life of crime. Matt Day is equally skilled as her lover/partner, though we aren't given as much insight into his character as we are Nikki's. Chris Haywood and Andrew S. Albert are complete naturals as the cops on their trail. For those two detectives, they get a brilliant variation on the "Pulp Fiction" bacon discussion that is the film's highlight.

If Bill Bennett fails directing the film into Tarantino-esque jazz rhythms, he succeeds ultimately by giving us an Australian outback that's so barren and unmistakably evil that one might think the "Mad Max" road barbarians were already bopping around, not patient enough to wait for the apocalypse. Characters talk of "unfathomable tunnels under the desert" or live in an abandoned nuclear testing facility, and all through the film there's subtle hints that the outback is one spooky, spooky place. Also, Bennett's decision to use no music (and I mean NO music) is a masterstroke, and he employs a champion cinematographer named Malcolm McCulloch to give the film an eerie, chilly atmosphere. Balance that atmosphere with the occasional joke and cheery scene, and "Kiss or Kill" keeps an audience on its toes.

Films like this usually disappoint as they drift into convention at the climax and towards the summary. Creativity in the third act of most movies these days seems quite lacking, in fact, which made the last third of "Kiss or Kill" such a pleasure to watch. I'll just say that thankfully, the surprises and expected twists were, like the rest of the movie, driven by character and personality, instead of the requirements of the genre.

This is a sort of modern day film noir directed by Bill Bennett and stars Matt Day and Frances O'Connor. Day and O'Connor play a young couple in Austrila who are a couple of con artists and they mostly scam married men who pick up O'Connor in a bar. Things are going good until someone actually dies and they wind up with a videotape, on that videotape is a celebrity named Zipper Doyle, who is a football star, and he's having sex with a young boy. Day and O'Connor go on the run with both the police looking for them and Doyle trying to kill them. There are several more deaths but you don't see who murders who and Day and O'Connor get to the point where they can't trust each other. It's a pretty good movie that was a huge hit in Austrilia.

If Frances O'Connor and Matt Day don't get regular, steady acting work and eventually become big stars, I'll be very surprised. Despite all the other good things about "Kiss Or Kill", the two of them hold the movie together. O'Connor is sexy and tough, and Day is a solid leading man. The rest of the cast does a good job, especially the cops. The plot is a little loose, but it kind of makes you guess as to what's going on. In the end, this is a must see. Go rent it right away!!!