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Kiss Or Kill

1997, Movie, R, 96 mins

Kiss Or Kill: Review

KISS OR KILL
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A fresh, edgy Australian twist on the old yarn about the killer couple on the lam that showcases two of the stars of the ultra-indie LOVE AND OTHER CATASTROPHES: Matt Day and the perkily brittle Frances O'Connor. Nikki Davis and Al Fletcher (O'Connor and Day) are devoted delinquents in love: She's the thoroughly screwed-up product of a monstrous childhood -- she saw her mother burned alive -- and an adolescence spent in state care, while he's the bad apple who hasn't fallen far enough from the tree for his family's liking. They do a nice little trade in robbing traveling businessmen, whom Nikki picks up in hotel bar and then drugs. Al comes up and together they rob the guy blind, figuring that when he wakes up he'll be too embarrassed to call the police. The night it all goes wrong is the night the mark doesn't wake up, and his locked briefcase turns out to contain a kinky videotape of local soccer star-turned-health-club-magnate Zipper Doyle (Barry Langrishe) interfering with a small boy. Nikki flies off the handle and phones Doyle's swank club, alerting him to the fact that they've got the tape. The lovers make the panicky decision to hit the road, with a pair of oddball cops (Chris Haywood and Andrew S. Gilbert) and the very pissed-off Doyle only a few hours behind them. Writer-director Bill Bennett tells his bloody tale in jittery jump cuts and washed-out shots of roads so desolate that it's not the couple ending up on a nuclear testing site that comes as a surprise -- it's not ending up there sooner. Despite Bennett's vigorous staging and O'Connor's creepy performance as the deeply disturbed Nikki -- imagine Parker Posey having a feature-length psychotic episode -- there's a point at which the film's familiar elements threaten to drag it down to cliched depths of dozens of direct-to-video time-wasters. But Bennett pulls off a perfectly pitched eleventh-hour save that redeems the whole creepy house of cards. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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