Tell Us How You Really Feel: Kiss of Death Edition


As Clothes On Film observes: lots of silk shirts in this movie. Classy.

There’s very little to say about this movie, but I’m going to do my best.

In this fine specimen of a crime flick, Nic Cage plays Little Junior, the son of Big Junior, who is a shadowy criminal-type figure. They seem to deal in stolen goods, cars, and computers. They also have lots of coke and a strip club.

Anyway, one of Little Junior’s endless underlings is a ginger creep played to perfection by Michael Rapaport. Rapaport’s sleaze drags his cousin, David Caruso, back into The Life for one last job, I need ya cuz, they gonna break mah fingers, ain’t we blood, etc. You all know how these stories go. And so Horatio goes, and everything gets all fucked up.

Of course, Caruso and Helen Hunt as his devoted wife have already established that they’re sober and redeemed for their baby daughter in the previous scene. It takes Caruso about three hours total to fully unravel the lives they’ve apparently been working for years to repair. Nice, asshole. Real nice.

Anyway, some drunk dude fires a shot, it hits Sam L. Jackson (non-fatally) in the face, and Caruso gets beat up by the cops a bunch for it, then he goes to jail. Caruso gets out really early in exchange for being an informant, so he’s stuck hanging around trying to gain Little Junior’s trust so he can help bust this coked out wild-card new guy from Philly (Nic Cage, stop besmirching our hometown) called Omar, played by Ving Rhames.

Then, the on-screen love affair of 1995 happens. The brief but poignant passion of Little Junior and Caruso’s character is everything to this movie.

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1 year ago · 2 notes · Comments

Even though I’ve now seen Kiss of Death twice, I think of this scene from The Critic every time. (Since Tumblr doesn’t allow me to link directly to the scene, skip ahead to 18:04.)

1 year ago · 0 notes · Comments

Cagematch of Death: best Nic Cage movie that hasn’t been made yet, or an omen that this project is going to kill us?

Cagematch of Death: best Nic Cage movie that hasn’t been made yet, or an omen that this project is going to kill us?

1 year ago · 1 note · Comments

We ended up remembering most of Kiss of Death once we had our memories jogged. Turns out it’s a forgettable movie. It features a delightfully coked-out and super-strong Nicolas Cage and, unfortunately, copious amounts of David Caruso’s bare, pink torso. Also, Samuel L. Jackson cries out of one eye for the whole movie and still manages to be a badass about it.

1 year ago · 0 notes · Comments

David Caruso takes his shirt off, like, seven times.

  • Marissa: He's taking his shirt off again! He looks like a naked mole rat, but ginger.
  • Beth: This movie needs to stop trying to sell us on the idea of David Caruso as a sex object. If you're going to do the dramatic shirt removal thing, you need to be ripped!
  • Marissa: He's like a human carrot. Even his lips are orange!

1 year ago · 1 note · Comments

#24 - Kiss of Death Marissa’s laptop died on Friday, so things have been a bit quiet at NCM HQ for the past few days. Things are getting back to normal, though, so we’ll be watching our next movie soon. Kiss of Death features a clash between two cinematic titans: our hero, Nicolas Cage, and David Caruso, the master of dramatically putting on sunglasses. You’d think this would be amazing, considering that Samuel L. Jackson rounds out the cast, but… we can’t remember. We watched this movie in November and, seriously, neither of us can recall a single thing about it, not even Nic Cage’s gnarly goatee. This movie is probably terrible. Stay tuned.

#24 - Kiss of Death

Marissa’s laptop died on Friday, so things have been a bit quiet at NCM HQ for the past few days. Things are getting back to normal, though, so we’ll be watching our next movie soon. Kiss of Death features a clash between two cinematic titans: our hero, Nicolas Cage, and David Caruso, the master of dramatically putting on sunglasses. You’d think this would be amazing, considering that Samuel L. Jackson rounds out the cast, but… we can’t remember. We watched this movie in November and, seriously, neither of us can recall a single thing about it, not even Nic Cage’s gnarly goatee. This movie is probably terrible. Stay tuned.

1 year ago · 5 notes · Comments