SLAMM #70, 11/19/97: Reel News

Love Hurts

One Night Stand Kiss Or Kill

One Night Stand
Starring Wesley Snipes, Nastassja Kinski, Robert Downey Jr., Ming Na Wen, and Kyle MacLachlan; Directed by Mike Figgis
(New Line)
***

There is an early scene in writer-director Mike Figgis' new film, One Night Stand, during which the two leads, Karen and Max, are accosted by a knife-wielding New York hood and his female accomplice. It is a tense moment: Karen's pearls are torn from her neck; Max is about to be relieved of his wallet. However, the only violent scene in an otherwise cerebral film of complex emotions is quickly resolved. After all, Max is played by Wesley Snipes, a very capable man of action-hero physique. At the outset of One Night Stand, L.A.-based commercial director Max, who is married with two children, briefly visits New York to a) work, and b) visit his AIDS-stricken best friend of old, Charlie, well played by Robert Downey, Jr. The odd pride of male relationships has created a five-year communication barrier between the two men, but, given the accelerated decline of Charlie's health, Max is empathic, apologetic and focused on the future. Like many of his other pictures, One Night Stand presents Snipes as a relatively flawless, take-care-of-business good guy.
Charlie's ultimately losing battle with AIDS is the backdrop against which the real story of One Night Stand is told. Through a series of somewhat questionable circumstances, including a missed flight, a traffic-snarling U.N. function, and the aforementioned holdup, Max hooks up with the stunning, blonde and also married Karen (Nastassja Kinski). Upon returning to L.A., what his infidelity seems to have done for Max is awaken his id: he smokes pot; voices firm opinions to his intellectually inferior friends; and, for some unknown reason, begins to turn up wearing ascots. Using Max's East Village film background, many overused N.Y. v. L.A. issues arise.
The fun and head-scratching really begins one year after his infidelity, when Max and Mimi head to the Big Apple to visit hospitalized Charlie. Max learns that Karen is married to Charlie's conservative brother Vernon, played, as always, dully by Kyle Maclachlan. The strange interaction that ensues between the two couples is forward-thinking, if not totally realistic. The intimate view of death that each individual is afforded leaves them to ponder the life lesson Charlie has learned and One Night Stand successfully teaches: "This is not a rehearsal."

-- Brian McMahon

Kiss Or Kill
Starring Frances O'Connor, Matt Day, and Chris Haywood; Directed by Bill Bennett
(October Films)
**

When a director/writer freely admits to the lack of originality in his own script, it is time to be afraid, very afraid. Screenplays without coherent plot rarely manage to pick up sufficient artistic steam to become even adequate films.
The Australian road picture Kiss or Kill isn't a terrible film, but it certainly isn't a particularly good film either. An honestly good film would have much more than the hackneyed criminal-but-good-at-heart-young-couple-on-the-run premise to keep it from the dust pile. The criminals in question are a good-looking couple, which never hurts, with sympathetic stories of childhood woe, which also doesn't hurt. But there is just something missing. Beyond wondering what cute little number the babe (Frances O'Connor) will put on next, there is no suspense here. The cops are a bit more interesting than usual, the foreign locale educational if nothing else, but that's about as far as it goes. Like a child playing with a room full of toys, Bennett keeps picking up plot twists then just dropping them without a backward glance.
Kiss' only innovation comes in the form of some of the most annoying photography to hit the big screen in a long time. The makers of "N.Y.P.D. Blue" would cringe in horror at the sight of such a cut-filled movie. This sort of thing may work when editing documentaries, as Bennett once did, but in a feature it is maddening.
In the end, the drama suggested by the title comes up short by miles. The film provides, as promised, both kisses and kills, but without any of the inherent interest that both, when presented skillfully, can provide.

-- Anne Reiman