Kiss the Girls (1997 film)

Kiss the Girls
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Gary Fleder
Screenplay by	David Klass
Based on	Kiss the Girls by James Patterson
Produced by	David Brown Joe Wizan
Starring	Morgan Freeman Ashley Judd Cary Elwes Tony Goldwyn Jay O. Sanders
Cinematography	Aaron Schneider
Edited by	Armen Minasian Harvey Rosenstock William Steinkamp
Music by	Mark Isham
Production company	Rysher Entertainment
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	October 3, 1997 (1997-10-03)
Running time	117 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$27 million
Box office	$60.5 million

Kiss the Girls is a 1997 American neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by Gary Fleder and starring Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, and Cary Elwes. The screenplay by David Klass is based on James Patterson's best-selling 1995 novel of the same name. A sequel titled Along Came a Spider was released in 2001.

Plot

As a teenage boy in 1975 Boca Raton, Florida, a future serial killer calling himself Casanova kills his first four victims. Elsewhere in 1981 Chapel Hill, North Carolina, another killer calling himself The Gentleman Caller kills a young couple on a lake.

Years later, Casanova leaves a young woman to die in the woods. Around the same time, detective, forensic psychologist and author Alex Cross Alex Cross returns to his Washington, DC home to find several relatives waiting for him and is informed that his niece, Naomi "Scootchie" Cross, currently a student at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, is missing. He travels to North Carolina with his partner Sampson. They meet Durham detectives Nick Ruskin and Davey Sikes, who tell them that the FBI and DEA are involved and that eight to ten women are missing, all from different states; all have received notes from someone calling himself Casanova. Around the same time, Casanova abducts another woman, Dr. Kate McTiernan, and makes her part of his harem of young, attractive, and exceptional women.

In Los Angeles, reporter Beth Lieberman is working on a serial killer story about The Gentleman Caller, who has just raped and murdered a 14-year-old girl. He threatens "bonus kills" if his letters are not published in her newspaper. FBI agent Kyle Craig meets Lieberman in LA.

Casanova plans to kill Kate McTiernan because she has broken his rules, but she fights him and manages to escape, running into a forest and jumping off a cliff into a river. Meanwhile, Cross discovers that one of The Gentleman Caller's notes published in the Los Angeles Times mentions Naomi. After contacting Lieberman and her editor-in-chief, he learns that Casanova and The Gentleman Caller are communicating as East Coast and West Coast serial killers. McTiernan, recovering at a hospital, is visited by Cross. He learns she was drugged with Marinol, which leads them to believe that Casanova is a doctor or a pharmacist. Agent Craig informs them that Lieberman was murdered by The Gentleman Caller. Her files contained hints to a possible suspect, Dr. William Rudolph from Los Angeles. Cross and McTiernan travel there with Craig, and McTiernan rules Rudolph out as Casanova, meaning he must be The Gentleman Caller. A manhunt for the killer begins, but he escapes several times and vanishes. A search of his apartment uncovers a picture of him with one Dr. Wick Sachs; notes on the back identify Sachs as Casanova.

Cross and Sampson discuss a theory that the girls are being held in an underground house, built in an area that was part of the Underground Railroad. Sachs is a professor at Duke and known as the campus skeleton, as well as a suspect when two students were murdered in the early 1980s. Later Ruskin and Sikes ask Cross for help in catching Casanova, whom they believe to be Sachs.

Rudolph reminisces how he met Casanova, who had known Rudolph had killed the young couple. They shared their experiences and formed a bond. When they reunite, they decide to work together to eliminate Cross. They attack McTiernan after she returns to her home, leaving her seriously wounded. Cross notices the attack is different from the first one and suspects both men worked together. The next day, Dr. Sachs is brought in for questioning. Cross attacks him physically, noticing that Sachs is not very strong, and Cross is sure that he is not Casanova. However, the FBI arrests Sachs nonetheless after finding evidence pointing to him. Sampson and Cross head to the forest again, taking a hand-written map given to them by an Underground Railroad historian. In a previously unsearched area, they find the underground house with the captive women. However, the two killers have been watching and assault them, seriously injuring Sampson. Cross shoots at them, hitting one in the shoulder. The two leave, stealing a truck. Cross pursues them and eventually forces them to separate. In the following gunfight, he kills Rudolph. The surviving women, including Naomi, are reunited with their loved ones.

Cross looks for clues and deduces Casanova's true identity. Cross keeps the information from Agent Craig and decides to conduct his own stakeout. He follows Detective Sikes, positive that he is Casanova, looking for a new woman to kidnap. Cross snoops outside a house which Sikes has entered. Sikes sees him, and they fight. The woman turns out to be Sikes' mistress, an affair the FBI knew about.

A while later, while visiting McTiernan, Cross goes jogging and finds a dead FBI agent. He runs back to the house where Casanova, who is revealed to be Sikes' partner, Ruskin, hits him with a stun gun. With Cross incapacitated, Casanova heads for Kate, but she fights him and defeats him. As he aims his gun at her, Cross recovers in time to shoot and kill him. Cross and McTiernan later go their separate ways even though they have become close friends. Once back in Washington, Cross and Sampson receive a new case.

Cast

• Morgan Freeman as Dr. / Detective Alex Cross
• Ashley Judd as Dr. Kate McTiernan
• Cary Elwes as Detective Nick Ruskin
• Alex McArthur as Detective Davey Sikes
• Bill Nunn as Detective John Sampson
• Jeremy Piven as Detective Henry Castillo
• Brian Cox as Chief Hatfield
• Jay O. Sanders as FBI Agent Kyle Craig
• Tony Goldwyn as Dr. William Rudolph
• William Converse-Roberts as Dr. Wick Sachs
• Roma Maffia as Dr. Ruocco
• Richard T. Jones as Seth Samuel
• Gina Ravera as Naomi Cross
• Heidi Schanz as Megan Murphy
• Tatyana Ali as Janelle Cross
• Mena Suvari as Coty Pierce
• Anna Maria Horsford as Vickie Cross
• Helen Martin as Nana Maybellene Cross

Production

Filming

Principal photography began on April 16, 1996. The film was shot two weeks on location in North Carolina on the streets of Durham, in nearby county parks, and outside a Chapel Hill, North Carolina residence. The police station was constructed in a downtown Durham warehouse. The majority of filming occurred in the Los Angeles area, with locations including the Disney Ranch, The Athenaeum at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, a house in the Adams historic district of Los Angeles, and on the campus of the University of Southern California in University Park. Designed by American production designer Nelson Coates, the majority of the sets, including the tunnels and underground chambers, were constructed in sound stages on the Paramount Studios lot. Filming was completed on July 10.

Release

The film premiered at the Deauville Film Festival in September 1997 before opening on 2,271 screens in the US the following month. It earned $13,215,167 in its opening weekend and a total of $60,527,873 in the US, ranking #30 in domestic revenue for the year.

The film was not shown in some theaters in central Virginia at the time of release, due to the unsolved murders of three teenage girls in the area. This decision was out of respect for the families and surrounding communities. The murders were eventually solved and attributed to Richard Evonitz.

Reception

Critical reception

The film received negative reviews and has a "Rotten" rating of 32% on Rotten Tomatoes from 34 reviews with the consensus: "Detective Alex Cross makes his inauspicious cinematic debut in Kiss the Girls, a clunky thriller that offers few surprises".

Stephen Holden of The New York Times said the film "is cut from the same cloth as The Silence of the Lambs, but the piece of material it uses has the uneven shape and dangling threads of a discarded remnant.... [It] begins promisingly, then loses its direction as the demand for accelerated action overtakes narrative logic". Holden writes of Morgan Freeman that he "projects a kindness, patience and canny intelligence that cut against the movie's fast pace and pumped-up shock effects. His performance is so measured it makes you want to believe in the movie much more than its gimmicky jerry-rigged [sic] plot ever permits".

In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half out of four stars and said, "David Klass, the screenwriter, gives Freeman and Judd more specific dialogue than is usual in thrillers; they sound as if they might actually be talking with each other and not simply advancing plot points.... [They] are so good, you almost wish they'd decided not to make a thriller at all - had simply found a way to construct a drama exploring their personalities".

Rita Kempley of The Washington Post called the film "a tense, scary, perversely creepy thriller" and added that "David Klass ... blessedly deletes the graphic descriptions of torture and rape included in the novel. Unfortunately, he also neglects to include any explanation of Casanova's behavior. Otherwise Kiss the Girls does what it's supposed to do. A solid second film from director Gary Fleder, it's sure to set pulses racing and spines tingling". In the same newspaper, Desson Howe felt that "the movie ... operates on the crime-movie equivalent of automatic pilot. It takes off, flies and lands without much creative intervention".

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Stack thought "the story ... goes on too long. It has too many confusing plot twists and keeps losing energy. Blame it on Hollywood excess, or director Gary Fleder's uncertain hand. A cut of 15 minutes would have helped". He was more impressed by the film's stars, calling Morgan Freeman "compelling" and "a hero of extraordinary power that comes almost entirely from his unemotional, calculating calm", and stating that Ashley Judd "gives the sometimes plodding drama a dose of intense vitality. This young actress is getting awfully good at turning potentially gelatinous characters into substantive people who spark viewer interest".

Awards and nominations

Judd was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture Drama at the 1998 Satellite Awards.

Sequel and reboot

Four years after Kiss the Girls, a film adaptation of Along Came a Spider was released. Morgan Freeman reprised his role. Later, the franchise was rebooted with a 2012 adaptation of the novel Cross, titled Alex Cross, starring Tyler Perry in the titular role.

External links

• Kiss the Girls at IMDb
• Kiss the Girls at Box Office Mojo