Kiss The Girls

MPA Rating: R-Rating (MPA)

Reviewed by: Dave Rettig
CONTRIBUTOR

Moral Rating:	Very Offensive
Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience:	Adults
Genre:	Suspense
Length:	105 min.
Year of Release:	1997
USA Release:

Featuring	Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Cary Elwes, Tony Goldwyn, Jay O. Sanders / Director:
Director
Producer
Distributor	Paramount Pictures Corporation, a subsidiary of ViacomCBS

“Kiss The Girls” is an account of a series of abductions and slayings of several attractive young women. The kidnapper is getting away with murder, until Naomi Cross (Gina Ravera) is taken. Naomi’s uncle Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman) is a Washington DC detective who quickly travels to North Carolina to save his young niece. Clueless, the cops spend inordinate amounts of time staring at a corkboard tacked with photos of the missing ladies. Fortunately, one of the abducted women, Kate McTiernan (Ashley Judd), escapes using her kickboxing prowess. She brings the vital clues necessary to stop the psychotic Casanova from killing again.

Morgan Freeman lends his formidable acting skills to an otherwise lifeless film. “Kiss The Girls” is very typical of suspense movies; don’t expect to be shocked by the killer in this one. The plot contains so many weak threads that it barely stays together. The heroine is a kickboxing brain surgeon? Unbelievable! Freeman’s character breaches police protocol numerous times without even a slap on the wrist. This movie is a poor reason to provide Morgan Freeman with a stage.

“Kiss The Girls” contains violence, rape, adult situations, profanity and brief nudity. These facts combined with a total lack of intelligent content with which one could reach the lost makes for a big thumbs down! I would not recommend this film for any reason.

Skip this one folks. The plot is weak, the acting (excepting Freeman) is unimpressive, the characters are caricatures, and the content is offensive.

I agree wholeheartedly with Angie Boykin. Here was a movie which could have delivered up a fair amount of violence but chose instead to deal with the plot. There weren’t a lot of surprises, but enough to make it an enjoyable movie. One thing I really appreciated about this movie is that it cast the central female character as a strong woman, capable of saving her own life. Many in our society still think it would be unheard of for a “woman” to have a brilliant career, and also have learned to physically protect herself from a man. If we are going to continue to portray men in violent, aggressive situations with women, we need to also continue to develop strong female characters who fight back, whether physically, with their wits, or both. We are seeing less and less the type of film where the woman is attacked by a man, and the only way she is helped is by another man coming to her rescue. It is a proven fact that many criminals get their ideas from books or movies. Seeing that females might not only fight back, but win, sends a very strong message!

Russell Lavender

I have to say that I disagree with the guest reviewer. My husband and I saw this movie with another couple and we all felt it was a well made picture. In a time when graphic violence, gore and explicit sexual scenes are the norm, this movie contained little violence and one scene where a woman’s chest is shown so briefly that if you had blinked, you would have missed it entirely. The sex and violence are implied not displayed before our eyes. My husband said he would like to contact the makers of the film and thank them for giving the audience some credit as to having an imagination. Considering the story line of the movie, it could have been filled with rape scenes and gore. Yet even when the police in one scene discovered the body of one woman, she was covered with a sheet and you never saw anything but her hands. We and our friends were stunned by the ending. We thought the writers were very creative in how they handled the last scene. The milk carton idea was great. We also enjoyed Ashley Judd’s performance. What is so hard to believe about a young woman being a doctor and studying karate to protect herself and relieve the stress of her job?

Angie Boykin

The book this story is based on was too graphic for me to endure, so I expected a gory bloodbath in the movie. I was relieved to find these parts had been cut from the film, but unfortunately so was most of the plot which answered the questions plaguing me after I left the theatre. Why? How? Should I have bothered sitting through this? I really can’t recommend it—other than the acting.

Stephanie Hanson, age 40