Plot
Alex Cross is a well known detective and forensic psychologist based in Washington, D.C. Alex learns that his niece, Naomi, who lives in Durham, has not been found for four days now. Alex tries to calm his family. However, deep inside, he is worried about something bad that might have happened. He decides to go to Durham and see for himself whether he can find anything about Naomi. His cousin Sampson tells him that the place is out of his jurisdiction. But Alex is adamant about going to Durham and finding Naomi.
When Alex arrives in Durham, he waits for more than two hours to meet with the officers involved in the case. Subsequently, he finds out that there are at least ten girls who are on the missing persons’ list. It shocks Alex to think the police are unable to find anything about the abductor yet. He meets with the investigating officers, Detective Nick Ruskin and Detective Sikes. Together, they go to a place in the woods where the third body of a woman is found.
Alex sees that the woman is tied up against a tree with her hands behind her, and a part of her hair is cut down. The crime scene is way more brutal than Alex has imagined, which makes him more concerned about his niece. He meets with Chief Hatfield, who smoothly makes him aware that this is his jurisdiction and that he will not approve of any mess created by Alex. However, he is sympathetic toward Alex’s situation, knowing his niece can also be on the victim’s list, so he extends all the possible help, even including him in the case.
Dr. Kate McTiernan is a reputed doctor and an enthusiastic boxer. She lives alone, and she has an undying urge to fight back. Unbeknownst to her, she has just checked all the boxes for the serial abductor. One night, when Kate is asleep, the abductor gets inside her house, and with a bit of struggle, he kidnaps her. When she wakes up, she finds out that she is in a room that has stone walls. It looked like a cave or something, and she also felt that some heavy dosage was used to stabilize her.
Later, she sees a person in a mask who explains to her why he captured her. He is deeply in love with her since she is a very talented woman. He introduces himself as Casanova and tells her that if she listens to him, he will make sure that she doesn’t have to struggle a lot to live there. But Kate has different plans, as she is a fighter. She shouts to reach out if anyone is there with her and finds out that there are more women; each of them shares their name with her.
One day, when Casanova comes inside the room, Kate attacks him all of a sudden and runs to get out of this cave-like structure. She follows the light and finds herself in a jungle. She runs hard and falls over a couple of times, but she doesn’t stop on top of a cliff. Under that cliff flows a river, and behind her stands Casanova, her doom. She decides to jump off the cliff and ends up in a hospital.
Alex finds out, with the help of the PDR, that Kate was given a drug called Sistol. Luckily, the doctors were able to get the drug out of her system. When she feels okay, she helps with the investigation. Knowing Alex’s niece’s name, Kate tells him that she has talked to her and that she is willing to help him find Naomi. Alex goes to the internet and searches for the buyers of the drug called Sistol from the last five years. He finds out a plastic surgeon named Will Rudolph ordered a lot of Sistol two years ago. But the intriguing part is that using a Sistol for plastic surgery is forbidden.
So he ordered it under the terms of curing leukemia. But, in a small place, ordering such a huge amount of Sistol makes Alex doubt Rudolph more. He is almost sure that this Rudolph guy is either Casanova himself or can lead them to Casanova. They start following him without notifying the Durham police. Alex and Sampson go inside a nightclub, where Rudolph is seen talking to a young woman. With each step Rudolph is taking, Alex is more and more sure that he is their guy. Kate is asked to wait outside the nightclub, but she fails to do so. She comes inside and sees Rudolph and the way he is touching that young woman. She recognizes the touch and confirms him as Casanova.
When Alex follows Rudolph that night, he manages to escape, killing one of Sampson’s men and injuring Alex. Later, a house being utilized by Casanova is seized by Durham police, and they find out there is another killer named Gentleman Caller. As the investigation finds its way into the light, they get an idea of the place where Kate was kept. Naomi’s boyfriend has the best idea of Durham’s landscape, so he helps them find the location.
Meanwhile, Rudolph has come to the spot where Casanova has kept the women. It is, in fact, two serial abductors who kidnap women of versatile talents. Rudolph and Casanova have a fight, and Casanova shoots a bullet at him, only to threaten. But the bullet sound alerts Alex, and he ends up standing in front of a door that leads to the cave leading to the house to where the abducted women are being held. He enters the cave, and after a short but somewhat of a intense chase, Rudolph is fatally shot by Cross; however, Casanova manages to escape. The girls are now safe as Alex hugs his niece, Naomi, who is now under medical care.
When everything almost seems over, Kate invites Alex to her house for supper. In the hotel room, Alex suddenly finds similarities between Casanova’s handwritten message to him and Detective Nick Ruskin’s signature. Meanwhile, Nick has come to complete his circle by killing Kate. Nick is indeed the Casanova the whole police department is looking for. Kate doesn’t know about his real identity, so she welcomes him home. Soon, she understands that Nick is the killer, as he starts talking very similarly to the real Casanova.
Kate fights hard as she somehow manages to put the cuffs on Nick’s hands. There is a gas leak in the house, so Nick brings his lighter out to end everything at once. Alex arrives right at that moment and tries to take control of the situation, but manipulating a serial abductor’s mind seems pretty hard. Just as Nick is about to start the fire, Alex shoots at him using a milk pouch as a flash suppressor so that the muzzle fire doesn’t blast the house. Finally, Casanova dies in the hands of Alex as he goes to embrace Kate, who is still trembling with fear as she fights off her abductor for the second time.
Production
Filming
Principal photography began on April 16, 1996.[2] The film was shot two weeks on location in North Carolina on the streets of Durham, in nearby county parks, and outside a Chapel Hill, North Carolina residence.[3] The police station was constructed in a downtown Durham warehouse. The majority of filming occurred in the Los Angeles area, with locations including the Disney Ranch, The Athenaeum at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, a house in the Adams historic district of Los Angeles, and on the campus of the University of Southern California in University Park. Designed by American production designer Nelson Coates,[4] the majority of the sets, including the tunnels and underground chambers, were constructed in sound stages on the Paramount Studios lot. Filming was completed on July 10.[2]
Release
The film premiered at the Deauville Film Festival in September 1997 before opening on 2,271 screens in the US the following month. It earned $13,215,167 in its opening weekend and a total of $60,527,873 in the US,[1] ranking #28 in domestic revenue for the year.[5]
The film was not shown in some theaters in central Virginia at the time of release, due to the unsolved murders of three teenage girls in the area. This decision was out of respect for the families and surrounding communities.[6] The murders were eventually solved and attributed to Richard Evonitz.
Reception
Critical reception
The film received negative reviews and has a "Rotten" rating of 32% on Rotten Tomatoes from 34 reviews with the consensus: "Detective Alex Cross makes his inauspicious cinematic debut in Kiss the Girls, a clunky thriller that offers few surprises".[7]
Stephen Holden of The New York Times said the film "is cut from the same cloth as The Silence of the Lambs, but the piece of material it uses has the uneven shape and dangling threads of a discarded remnant.... [It] begins promisingly, then loses its direction as the demand for accelerated action overtakes narrative logic". Holden writes of Morgan Freeman that he "projects a kindness, patience and canny intelligence that cut against the movie's fast pace and pumped-up shock effects. His performance is so measured it makes you want to believe in the movie much more than its gimmicky jerry-rigged [sic] plot ever permits".[8]
In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half out of four stars and said, "David Klass, the screenwriter, gives Freeman and Judd more specific dialogue than is usual in thrillers; they sound as if they might actually be talking with each other and not simply advancing plot points.... [They] are so good, you almost wish they'd decided not to make a thriller at all - had simply found a way to construct a drama exploring their personalities".[9]
Rita Kempley of The Washington Post called the film "a tense, scary, perversely creepy thriller" and added that "David Klass ... blessedly deletes the graphic descriptions of torture and rape included in the novel. Unfortunately, he also neglects to include any explanation of Casanova's behavior. Otherwise Kiss the Girls does what it's supposed to do. A solid second film from director Gary Fleder, it's sure to set pulses racing and spines tingling".[10] In the same newspaper, Desson Thomson felt that "the movie ... operates on the crime-movie equivalent of automatic pilot. It takes off, flies and lands without much creative intervention".[11]
In the San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Stack thought "the story ... goes on too long. It has too many confusing plot twists and keeps losing energy. Blame it on Hollywood excess, or director Gary Fleder's uncertain hand. A cut of 15 minutes would have helped". He was more impressed by the film's stars, calling Morgan Freeman "compelling" and "a hero of extraordinary power that comes almost entirely from his unemotional, calculating calm", and stating that Ashley Judd "gives the sometimes plodding drama a dose of intense vitality. This young actress is getting awfully good at turning potentially gelatinous characters into substantive people who spark viewer interest".[12]
Awards and nominations
Judd was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture Drama at the 1998 Satellite Awards.[13]
