Kiss the Girls: A Satisfying Piece of Entertainment

There is a voice in the background, warm, rich, and creamy, asking "You want to know all about me, don’t you?" And a girl twists in her bed. And violins wail in the background. And then the sucker punch lands with the words, "I loved two sisters and they loved me too, except, they didn’t know it." And we immediately know the warmth in the voice was actually menace.

If it is done well, there is a terrifying intensity in films about serial killers, which transcends normal murder mysteries. Some of it has to do with the agenda, and some with the agency, which a killer brings in. Invariably there is a tease, a relentlessness, and a ruthlessness. The victims are largely unequal and the mind behind the murders is apocalyptic in its warped thinking. The helplessness builds sympathy and it builds suspense, and the big reveal brings the climactic release. Without sub-texts, the film is like a summer beach read with its entertainment wrapped inside the images. Sub-texts could transcend banalities and bring stirring realizations on society, social norms, or the irony of common practices.

Kiss the Girls follows the standard serial-killer theory and brushes its scenario with time-tested strokes. But the film also has Morgan Freeman playing Dr Alex Cross, an author and a detective. And when he says "Trust me" to his niece's mother, when the niece is abducted and disappears, one knows that there is something which is bound to happen.

At one point Dr Cross says "Power comes from leverage and technique." And the sagacious insight swings from one end to the other, as another girl is kidnapped, Ashley Judd. Her character Dr. Kate McTiernan is a smart and beautiful doctor who saves lives and is terrific at kickboxing. And through her, we learn how the kidnapping is done (why do people stay alone in stand-alone cottages?) and the killer's den is revealed, as are his thoughts. The killer calls himself Casanova and purrs to her, almost sympathetically "It must be like suffering the tortures of the damned." The play of a demented mind starts. And then she escapes through a terrifically-shot run through the woods which has a heart-throbbing slow-motion denouement. And suddenly the clueless quest of the police gets a jumpstart.

Ashley Judd is emphatic and defiant as Dr. Kate McTiernan, though frightened and traumatised, and she completely owns her role. She breaks down but also shows enough character to break into herself, to find deep-seated reservoirs, to save herself, and others. Her gustiness is at one with her kickass persona, and when she tells Dr Cross "Please stop greeting me like I’m a victim," one knows she is an equal partner in the high stake run to save the other kidnapped girls.

The slow unravelling of the detectives' quest is in conjunction with the unravelling of the killer's mind. And there is a gothic overlay in the architecture of the villain’s den, almost as if there was a conjoined exploration of primordial instincts in the underground caverns of a mind.

And when the denouement comes in a breathless spurt of revelations and realisations, James Brown's rhythm and blues song "I'll Go Crazy" plays into an elongated play of impending doom and throbbing suspense.

Kiss the Girls is an efficient thriller, and no more, but is made unusual with the time it spends in making us know its protagonists. It is less gory than the James Patterson book it is based on. But it has its red herrings, twists, and jumps – all of it embellished with the gravitas of the unflappable Morgan Freeman and the undefeatable cockiness of Ashley Judd.

As it happens ever so often, the pair rises above the story's trajectory and helps the film rise above its inadequacies. And in that, the film turns out to be a satisfying piece of entertainment, possibly not memorable, but also not minuscule.

Trivia

• Ashley Judd took kickboxing lessons before filming. As was her wont, she did many of her own stunts. But the studio refused when she insisted on leaping off a 150-foot waterfall. Instead, a wig-wearing stuntman, made the jump, barely missing the rocks as he went through the falls into the water below.
• Denzel Washington was to star as the protagonist but had to drop out due to scheduling problems, and Morgan Freeman was hired instead.
• After Kiss the Girls, the film Along Came a Spider was released, with Morgan Freeman again plying Dr Alex Cross. Later, the franchise was rebooted with Alex Cross, starring Tyler Perry in the role played by Morgan Freeman.

Watch Kiss the Girls here.

(Views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of OTTplay)

(Written by Sunil Bhandari, a published poet and host of the podcast ‘Uncut Poetry’)