Joanne Whalley Kilmer Kill Me Again
Two guys, some guns, a suitcase full of cash and the open up road: what could go wrong? Val Kilmer and Michael Madsen meet their friction match in Joanne Whalley Kilmer, a neo-noir bad news dame if at that place ever was one. The murderous melodrama stretches the length of Nevada; director John Dahl adds the cops and the Mob to his annihilating cocktail.
Impale Me Once again
Blu-ray
Olive Films
1989 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date March 22, 2016 /
Starring Val Kilmer, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Michael Madsen, Jon Gries.
Cinematography Jaques Steyn
Flick Editors Eric Beason, Frank Jiminez, Jonathan Shaw
Original Music William Olvis
Written by John Dahl, David W. Warfield
Produced by Steve Golin, Sigurjon Sighvatsson, David Westward. Warfield
Directed by John Dahl
One of the best of the neo-noirs, Kill Me Again put managing director John Dahl on the map as a man to watch, much like Carl Franklin and the nervous mini-archetype Ane Fake Move. 6 years earlier the Coen brothers had revived the small-time crime melodrama with Blood uncomplicated. Others had emulated the Coen'southward wicked humour, such as Martin Brest in Midnight Run. John Dahl shifted back to a straight telling of a tawdry little story with a basic noir setup: a dangerous killer, an untrustworthy adult female and a private detective a little too naïve for his own skilful.
Brutal criminal Vince Miller (Michael Madsen) steals a suitcase filled with money from two mobsters, killing ane in the process. He and his girlfriend Fay Forrester (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer) make a make clean break, but they debate when she insists on splitting up. She ends upwardly hitting Vince on the caput and taking everything. In Reno, Fay looks up private detective Jack Andrews (Val Kilmer) and talks him into helping her fake her death, which he does with the help of his best buddy Alan Swazie (Jon Gries). But Fay leaves Jack in the lurch. The cops are soon later him for the fake murder, followed by the mob as well. And don't forget Vince, who has put himself dorsum on Fay'south trail in record time. For Jack it all started as a way to help a lady out and make some money… and now he's got zero but trouble.
Kill Me Again is refreshing in that it doesn't go in for elaborate narrative tricks or diabolical character machinations – we're offered no plastic surgery, amnesia, or pocket-size impress well-nigh quadruple indemnity. Hungry Jack Andrews already owes money, and helping Fay false her death is a quick fix. But Fay is why mothers warn their sons about attractive women with unusual need. Considering the weirdness of Fay's offering Jack should have been a little more than conscientious, simply that's not how life works when you're broke and zippo's working out. And Fay is teasing Jack all the fashion with hints of a 'closer relationship.' This is pure old-fashioned noir territory.
Manager Dahl also strips away nigh of the fancy frills, to good effect. The story is told without cinematic tricks or kooky angles — I don't fifty-fifty remember any crane shots. We go the idea that these people are stuck on the roads of Nevada, where a roadblock isn't something i can get around easily — at that place's only i route in and out of most places, and going beyond the desert isn't practical. A clever setup in Dahl and co-producer David West. Warfield'due south screenplay has Jack encounter a roadblock on the Arizona side of the border. But a gas station and convenience store straddles the land line. The Nevada cops take over while Jack is stopped, but their roadblock is positioned so that Jack could simply go along without beingness checked by everyone. He has the money with him and the road is wide open. But no, he honors his delivery, and goes back to become Fay instead.
Scorsese's gangster movies pretty much went the limit with callous violence. This picture show has several trigger-happy acts all the same isn't a bloodbath. We know Vince is a killer, simply Jack is understandably disturbed when Fay proves capable of shooting a mobster in a Vegas hotel room, just like Kathie Moffat in Out of the Past. He should have known she was a piffling strange back when they were faking her death: in the 'scene of the crime' motel room, Jack pours real blood all over her, making a sticky, gory mess. She just bounces around and has a skillful time. Actually, we know Jack is a sitting duck the moment he meets Fay. If a woman you never met, asks you lot to practice something illegal while inviting you to make a pass at her, it is axiomatic that she'due south up to no good. That's Chandler rule of pollex #1.
Hundreds of movies and many TV shows present us with generic threatening thugs, to little effect. So why practise the bad guys in Kill Me Again nevertheless seem menacing? The best I can exercise for an reply is that a) we place with the vulnerable characters, and b) the director doesn't misemploy the 'dread factor' with graphic violence early on in the show. Dahl and Warfield requite us plenty of unfeeling, vicious bad guys, merely they're all in short scenes, talking on the phone, or tracing the stolen money. Likewise the police remain peripheral, simply are given a off-white shake. Jack only slowly realizes how bad things are for him. The one time that he gets Fay to tell him the truth, is when he pulls into a highway patrol parking lot and refuses to budge until she comes clean. A trooper comes to the window to politely inquire if everything'south okay. Information technology'southward quite pleasurable to see Fay squirm and squeal, every bit if Jack were sticking her pes into a fire.
Crime pictures ofttimes invent complicated ways for people to trace each other — homing devices, surveillance equipment — just we're more pleased when a prove finds a simpler way, every bit in Midnight Run when a kidnapper takes a ransom photo that displays a towel with a hotel's logo on it. In Impale Me Again Fay and Jack are easily traced through some stupid rubber bands – zippo fancy at all. They never figure information technology out; no wonder they call back that the mob sees all and knows all. Trapped in a hotel on Lake Mead, Jack must invent an elaborate escape plan that again involves a 5-mile hike to safety and a second faked death scene, which explains the film's title. Simply when things get complicated the plans are forgotten, and nobody is in complete control. Kill Me Again works its style to a crazy withal logically sound finish, that'southward very satisfying. Dorsum in the early '50s, a film like this could make the reputation of an ambitious director. I'thousand thinking of Richard Fleischer and The Narrow Margin in this context. Just John Dahl co-wrote this movie as well. In a only film industry he'd have gone to the caput of the class.
A total 27 years accept passed since this 'mod' crime moving-picture show was released. Val Kilmer's reputation is no longer in the best of shape, but in 1989 he was on a serious curl, with high visibility parts in Peak Gun and Willow, where he incidentally met and midweek Joanna Whalley. Brad Pitt wasn't quite on the scene yet, to compete with him for parts. Kilmer'due south certainly good equally Jack Andrews, but Ms. Whalley makes the movie. Her Fay Forrester is a cheap tease of a kind that both the goonish Vince and the gullible Jack would hands fall for. Often praised as one of the most beautiful actresses of her time, Whalley has huge expressive optics and a smile that could get most any human to do most anything. Her impressive showcase opportunities — Dance with a Stranger, The Singing Detective, Scandal — didn't snowball into a bigger stardom. She kept the Kilmer proper name until 1995. She and her husband share an enthusiastic sex activity scene that's a petty less voyeuristic than the one between Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger in Roger Donaldson'south '94 remake of The Getaway. That show holds the record for the hottest married-actors-become-it-on activity this side of an Internet sex tape.
Afterwards ten years of effort the capable Michael Madsen was also virtually to stride up in the world — just the next twelvemonth he nabbed memorable roles in The Doors, Thelma and Louise and Reservoir Dogs, and he hasn't looked back since.
Olive Films' Blu-ray of Kill Me Again is a spotless transfer of this attractive colour feature that gets a maximum event from open desert roads. The only expensive- looking scene is when Fay blows some of her money gambling in a casino, and I wouldn't exist surprised to learn that the filmmakers constitute a way to do that cheaply too. The of import thing is that we're never aware of the economy. I'd seen this bear witness on cable Television receiver but it looks far improve here, in widescreen and such well-baked detail.
Equally with about all Olive releases there are no extras. That's a shame, as John Dahl is a filmmaker nosotros'd like to know more than about. His name was definitely a buzzword for a few seasons, until Quentin Tarantino came on the scene. What'south with Olive Films' cover illustration? It's then dark, it looks similar a misprint.
Past Glenn Erickson
Kill Me Again
Blu-ray rates:
Moving picture: First-class
Video: Splendid
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: None
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? N0 ; Subtitles: None
Packaging: Continue case
Reviewed: March 20, 2016
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