Kiss Me Deadly
|
List Price: Our Price: $8.14 You Save: $6.80 (45%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $6.01 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Kiss Me Deadly
Movie Review: The Hunt for the Great Whatsit
Summary: 4 Stars
After the post-war generation crafted the elegantly deadly James Bond and issued him a license to kill they drained the swamp and found Mike Hammer sleeping it off under a rotting log.
Robert Aldrich's KISS ME DEADLY brings Mickey Spillane's pulp hero to life in all his amoral glory. Ralph Meeker plays the private eye whose specialty is divorce cases. Meeker's Hammer is a character who'd transcended cynicism before he crawled out of the crib. Hammer is a modern man (circa 1955) and the brooding, blasted and failed Romanticism of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe isn't for him. Hammer has no preconceptions to shatter. His curiosity in things end after he learns "what's in it for him."
Unfortunately, as drawn in this movie, Hammer has almost no dialogue. We have to learn about him through his actions, and about the only time we see animated humanity behind his grinning eyes is when he's smashing someone's fingers in a desk drawer. On second thought, maybe we don't want to learn that much about him after all. He's got a hep bachelor pad though, with a real swinging answering machine. Hef would have been proud.
KISS ME DEADLY is long on style and dreadfully short on substance. The closer you look at the plot the flimsier it becomes. I wonder if that was the point, though. It seems to be, with its stylized violence and penchant for clothing its actresses in nothing but terrycloth robes, that KISS ME DEADLY was trying to push the envelope a bit, jump the Code and stake out unclaimed territory. If so, it probably worked in ways a modern audience is too jaded to recognize. Even so, there is a violent scene or two that made me squirm. Not for every taste, but an intriguing character study of an inaccessible character. I enjoyed it as a fresh take on the tough-guy private eye, but KISS ME DEADLY is probably not for everyone.
Movie Review: Feelm nwahrrr
Summary: 4 Stars
Dark and moody and violent, more style than substance -- and enough more to make it all right (as Humphrey Bogart said in another movie in this genre). Credited with inspiring the entire French New Wave cinema movement of the late 1950s. (In one scene that would have sent those French directors, Ralph Meeker walks a deserted but lamp-lit city street late at night, trailed by a would-be assassin. Their footsteps echo in the stark landscape; their shadows are about a mile long.) Reportedly, French critical writing found deep symbolism in various scenes, whereas director Robert Aldrich responded that this was news to him, they were just shooting a detective picture. True to the spirit of the Mike Hammer novels, there is a pervasive vagueness. Who are all these thugs? (We don't even see their faces at first.) What are they after? (A nasty little radioactive Pandora's Box, we eventually learn; it is very well staged but little explained, and is ultimately a fool's prize.) Well-cast Meeker portrays unredeemed sleazy private eye Mike Hammer, whose normal line is blackmailing married men with the help of his girlfriend Velda (he carries a .45, Velda a .32). The menacing thugs, wearing baggy clothes and fedoras, we might take for NKVD (as indeed they are, in other of the Mickey Spillane novels circa 1950, and also near the end in the 1994 film _Burnt by the Sun_), but sufficient unto this film is the evil thereof, without contribution from Stalin, Beria & Co.Movie Review: Excellent film noir
Summary: 4 Stars
Ralph Meeker portrays a cheerfully brutal Mike Hammer who, tired of low rent divorce cases, follows up on the murder of a young woman that he encountered on a dark desert road in the hopes of cutting himself in on something big. Unlike most films that feature a strong hero who makes his own rules, "Kiss Me Deadly" doesn't sugarcoat the basic fascism of such a character. In this story, Hammer isn't even a paticularly good detective. His practice consists of whoring out his beautiful and adoring secretary, Velda (Maxine Cooper), to set up married men for blackmail. His investigation in this case basically consists of following up on names that have been handed to him, usually by Velda. Along the way, he smashes fingers and slaps faces until the disastrous finale, which leaves Hammer no wiser and no better off than he was before.Robert Aldrich's direction is wonderful. The first fifteen minutes or so are so good that they set a tone of tension and desperation that the rest of the film cannot maintain. Nevertheless, this is a superior example of filmmaking.
Movie Review: Great Film Noir
Summary: 4 Stars
Simply put, if you're into film noir, this is a movie to be revisited, or seen for the first time. No blockbuster actors, but everyone played their part well. A rather gritty movie considering it came out in the mid-50's. If you love nostalgia and are familiar with the LA area, you'll love the scenes shot on location.
What's always a good quality in any movie is a story you can follow, which you have here. It's the typical noir where a lot of smoking & drinking goes on, yet everyone's dressed up.
In short, a PI picks up a hitchhiker (Cloris Leechman!) that escaped from an insane asylum. She knows information that everyone's trying to find out. It's all about a box in a gym locker.
I found it especially interesting, recognizing a lot of the supporting cast (I watched a lot as a kid on Saturdays with dad). I also have a huge interest in Los Angeles past, so seeing the trolly car going up the hill, hotels downtown not there anymore, etc etc, was a big treat.
If film noir is your thing, don't pass this one up. Great stuff!
Movie Review: It's 'The Bomb'
Summary: 4 Stars
This late entry into the film noir genre has some harsh and memorable scenes and an ending unlike any other film noir. Of course, most of those weren't made during the A-Bomb scares of the mid 1950s, as this was.
The movie features a tough, no-nonsense Mike Hammer-like private eye, played well by Ralph Meeker, whose narration is a little dated but fun to hear. This is one of those noirs in which everyone is a tough-talking, tough-acting mug and one never knows who to trust. Except for Cloris Leachman, who is only in the first quick (but haunting) opening scene, the females in here are unfamiliar actresses but people with interesting faces and personalities.
That opening with Leachman is a real attention-grabber and is one of the best starts I've ever seen in a crime movie. It's very creepy, as is the unique ending. I also appreciated the cinematography in here a lot more once the DVD was issued.