Kiss or Kill - Film Review
July 1st, 2008 by Robert
The 90’s was a bit of a golden age for crime films. Thanks to the Tarantino-mania that gripped film industries around the world, hardly a week would go by without a new gritty film about scary, desperate criminals fleeing from even scarier, more desperate criminals hitting the cinemas. Australia was no different. In fact, Bill Bennett’s Kiss or Kill even picked up Best Film at the 1997 AFI Awards - which is interesting because, these days, the film doesn’t stand out as one of the better Australian films of the decade, even within its genre. Read the rest of this entry »
The period around the late 60’s and early 70’s was something of a golden age for crime films. There was something about the sterile light and the grainy film largely in use, along with a prevailing tendency to present stark stories with hard-edged anti-heroes - even the Westerns of the period adopted the flavour. And among crime films of the period, none stands out more than John Boorman’s seminal masterpiece, Point Blank. 
The latest film from Quentin Tarantino is a clear case of style over substance. But it struck me as I was watching: I don’t think he needs any substance. His style packs such a punch that even a piece of self-indulgence like Death Proof manages to provide a pretty satisfactory couple of hours of entertainment. 
David Cronenberg poses some interesting questions on the nature of evil in his latest thriller. Eastern Promises is a brooding, atmospheric snapshot of a murky London underworld. Apart from focusing on a crime subculture hitherto untreated by films, it presents a mesmerising study of what happens when the world we know brushes up against what lies beneath. 
Brian de Palma has obviously poured his heart and soul into his film of James Ellroy’s famous novel, The Black Dahlia. Unfortunately, beyond the superficial style and artistry, it fails in almost every other respect. 
Okay, I get it, the joke is on all those silly action films with their ludicrously choreographed shoot-out scenes and ridiculously butch leading men. But, even accounting for the fact that Shoot ‘Em Up is aggressively sending itself up, you’re left with one inescapable conclusion - it’s still pretty shit. 
The term “taut thriller” gets bandied about quite a bit these days, but no film in recent memory deserves the epithet more than the Coen brothers’ latest piece of work, No Country For Old Men.