david-sarkies The cool thing about this movie is that it was made in South Australia in my friend's hometown of Ceduna. Okay it was annoying him telling me where all of the scenes were and how they were shot out of sequence, but generally you wouldn't know unless you have lived there for a while. Kiss or Kill is a road movie and it is supposed to be shot as they travel across Australia to Perth yet it is shot almost entirely in and around Ceduna. It is interesting though how the filmmakers make it seem that you are journeying for quite a way even though in real life they do not.I liked Kiss or Kill. It was an art-house movie that made it onto the NewVision label and distributed across the United States. I think that is pretty good for a homegrown movie. Australia seems to be producing a lot of art-house movies now though Kiss or Kill is more light on the art house than other movies. What did annoy me was the number of cuts that they would use during the scenes. It is difficult to explain but they would jump a couple of seconds in the action which gave it a different quality but it did annoy me. There are a number of reasons why they did it this way but it could simply be a style that the director wanted.This movie is a movie about a couple of juvenile delinquents who lure married business men into hotel rooms and rob them. One day they kill the victim so decide to flee the city and go to Perth. Unfortunately they have a video in which a very famous football player is recorded basically being a pedophile. It is possible that the businessman was blackmailing him but now the video is in the hands of these kids and the footballer wants it back. Thus they have the police on their tail as well as the footballer. Then people start dying and it seems possible that one of the couple are killing them. We believe that Nick, the woman, is killing people in her sleep, and it comes to a point where she believes it.Kiss or Kill is a story with a good plot though thematically it is empty. It looks at the characters of the juveniles. Nick absolutely hates men after she watches her mother get torched when she was a kid. Thus as men were being killed she believed that it was a psychological aversion to men. We also explore the relationship between them as they struggle to come to terms with murder and they fact that they might be caught. This is where their ride comes to an end because even though they are not moralistic, the fact that they are to be incriminated for many murders they look like everything is at an end.Even though it is a good movie, it does not raise any deep themes nor does it leave you thinking. The end slipped into standard Hollywood rubbish but Kiss or Kill is a good movie to watch, especially to support the South Australian Film Industry.

dbdumonteil This is a near amateur work,sometimes incoherent,sometimes self-conscious.But further acquaintance shows that you should not be taken in by appearances.This is a very strange story,with an actress Frances O'Connor ,who resembles Juliette Lewis (try to see "Kalifornia" and you'll know what I mean.)A couple (A poor man's Bonnie and Clyde) is on the lam with the cops hot on their heels.The girl has lured middle-aged man in order to strip him of what he has on him,with a little help from her lover.She has given him sleeping pills but unfortunately he has died.We will never really know whether they were guilty.Then begins a chase,including two cops,a pedophile former athlete,and a bunch of weirdoes whom we only see a few minutes and remember though.Strange is the keyword .The bizarre innkeeper,who knows scary things about the hole he lives in,the couple,who eats a fondue in the desert-a dish you usually eat in the French/Swiss mountains when it's very cold outside-,the cop who begins to talk about his handicapped child,the old couple in a former nuclear area, and their awful fate,everything exudes something drastically out of the ordinary(or too ordinary depending on whom you ask,anyway it's all the same).Frances O'Connors and her co-star are effective;their relationship is much more complex than we thought at the beginning of the movie.And the ending is even more disturbing,the last line of Nicole being very ambiguous .Once thing for sure is the love they share,it's really true love.We will never know why the boy ties her to the bed:it's not simply sexual,it seems that there's something more frightening .And when we begin to understand,the explanation becomes null and void.Filmed any old how,"kiss or kill" deserves your attention,and is a must for road movies buffs.

Dennis Littrell The opening scene of this lovers on the lam, Aussie style, noire thriller is designed to arrest our attention. Mommie answers the door only to have gasoline tossed on her and lighted while her four-year-old daughter Nikki watches. This accounts for Nikki's life of crime and explains why one night she doses her lover boy with the same stuff. However she doesn't light him up; it's only an exciting little joke.Anyway, our lovers, Nikki and Al, have a little scam. They target business men at their hotels, Nikki as bait, Al to finish them off. An overdose of the mickey kills one of their victims and the lovers hit the road, chased by the cops and by a rugby legend whose pedophile video starring himself they have accidentally acquired. He has to keep THAT secret. So we have a chase for most of the movie, a kind of imitation Natural Born Killers (1994) cum Wild at Heart (1990) with some original spin and some diverting down under culture clips including the cops using sunscreen to protect the tips of their ears from skin cancer while the hole in the ozone layer grows.Francis O'Connor, who plays Nikki is a little on the ugly/sexy side, mostly ugly, but Matt Day, who plays Al, adores her as a little boy might adore his mother. His problem is a homicidal temper and a blatant disregard for human life, except his own and Nikki's. He kills whenever the opportunity presents itself, it seems. Her problem is she kinda likes killing these men.Neither one of these Aussie trash types is overly bright, but then neither are the cops.Bill Bennett's story is derivative and banal but there are some witty elements. The scene in which one of the cops pretends to be kosher is funny, and the couple living on a nuclear testing site is amusing. The leg of kangaroo and the way Nikki has to get out from under the mark's dead body are nice touches. Alas, we have the ending. Bennett had a little fun with it, but his spin comes off as stupid and in sharp contrast with what proceeded it, which was mostly realistic.Jump-cuts? It's just a mannerism. Bennett will get over it.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

Staff-4 What was with the jump cuts in this movie? After a decent opening scene the rest was a great bore. Throw this one on the barbee!