Kiss the Girls

This was an OK movie that could have been great. Morgan Freeman was fine as usual, but some of the other characters were poorly cast. I thought Ashley Judd was completely unbelievable as a surgeon/boxer/detective (sheesh!). By the way, how many delicately handed brain surgeons do you know that are also kick boxers? The whole movie had moments of disbelief and improbability. Why in the early scenes did the surgeon/kick boxer have a fish tank at the very foot of her staircase (which she subsequently crashed into after being chased by Casanova?). And how did the busy surgeon suddenly find time to tag along a police investigation? At the end, when Alex fires the shot, how come none of the cops outside the house come rushing in (or even before when all the commotion was going on)?

Kiss the Girls is an excellent thriller! It has very good acting by cast! Morgan Freeman was great and Ashley Judd was very good! Brian Cox was good as well! I thought Cary Elwes was something else! The other cast members Alex McArthur, Tony Goldwyn, Jay O. Sanders, and Richard T. Jones were good. Is it Me or did he try to act and sound like Denzel Washington? Any way the movie is good and focuses on a great character named Alex Cross! In case you don't know there is another film that Morgan Freeman reprises his role as Alex Cross and its called Along Came A Spider! It is My favorite of the two but I am not saying that there is anything wrong with Kiss the Girls which is an excellent movie! I recommend you see both films!

Kiss the Girls (1997) Not a bad film, "entertaining" in the sense of sitting back and watching an episode of Bones or CSI. It has more development and higher production values, I guess, than television, but really it is a routine film hardly worth thinking too hard about. Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman have been together for three movies, and they work together well. I'm not sure I see any special chemistry there, and for my money, it's a Morgan Freeman film. He plays a Forensic Psychologist and is all business, not swayed by stupidity. Judd plays a victim at first, and then in an unlikely twist, joins the investigation. The plot is frankly a little predictable, and you keep thinking there will be this giant twist, but there isn't. You simply don't know exactly who the perp is. Ah, well, it propels itself all the same, a fun distraction.

What 'Kiss The Girls' has going for it mainly is Morgan Freeman. What's the old saying? He would be interesting reciting the phone book. Freeman has the kind of screen presence that other actors only dream of possessing. He is calm, reassuring, magnetic... he is wise without acting like a know-it-all; maturity and decency seem to radiate from him. It's interesting to ponder whether Freeman is really that good of an actor, or if he simply possesses an overdose of charisma, like Errol Flynn. In any event, he's the best thing about 'Kiss The Girls', a standard-issue sicko-on-the-loose-kidnapping-beautiful-women thriller. It's basically a rehash of 'Silence of the Lambs' without the Hannibal Lecter character. And without the style. Much is hinted at and some of the dialogue is explicit, but that's as far as 'Kiss The Girls' goes. Visually, it's really pretty dull. Good thing it has Morgan Freeman to aim the camera at. Ashley Judd plays the one who gets away, a kidnap victim who escapes the psycho's dungeon. (And it is literally a dungeon. No basement or shed. A real dungeon.) She is also a brilliant doctor. See, this sick creep likes to kidnap INTELLIGENT and INDEPENDENT women. No airheads for him. Unfortunately, this little twist in the usual plot provides no new ideas or fresh situations, unless you count Freeman's daughter playing the violin. Judd is adequate in the not-very-believable role; she strikes me as a female Keanu Reeves, something sort of android-ish about her. And good old Cary Elwes (warning- spoiler coming) is- surprise!- the psychotic kidnapper. Like we were going to believe he was a sincere, good old boy policeman. Poor Cary Elwes- he is really typecast. But I can see why. He just has that kind of face. 'Kiss The Girls' seems a lot like your typical TV-movie of the week; it's what the critics call an 'agreeable time-filler'... but it DOES have Morgan Freeman in it.

In this modest enough psycho-thriller, once more Freeman plays a policeman on the path of a perverse serial killer, and again the shade is bottomless and the antagonist is ingenious and the atrocities are intended to convey some sort of perverted meanings. Though as commercial and formula-driven as it is, the movie's not a rehash but a fertile piece, based on a Patterson book about a criminal who, the Freeman character perceives, is not killing his quarries, but accumulating them. Often said by moviegoers to be the actor whose presence has the most authority of any of his generation, Freeman has an exceptional bearing on the screen, a particular determination that we believe. He never looks or sound like he's pretending. He never gives a superficial, obvious or distracted impression, and even in movies that aren't that good, he's not guilty by association: You feel he's genuine even as a film may capsize around him. Freeman plays Patterson's pet character Alex Cross, a forensic psychologist with the Washington, D.C., police, who becomes entrenched in a chain of kidnappings in North Carolina. When his own niece is taken, he flies there and calls on the police department, where he's kept waiting for hours until he ultimately barges into the office of the chief. The victims are being taken by a man who inscribes himself "Casanova," and one of his victims is found dead tied to a tree and "left for the critters to find." Cross questions why there aren't more bodies, and speculates that Casanova is a collector who kills only when he believes he needs to. His niece and her fellow captives must still be alive somewhere. His hypothesis is certified by what comes of extraordinarily sexy local doctor Ashley Judd, who also gives the sometimes humdrum drama a helping of forceful energy. And what Freeman brings to all of his scenes is a really specific thoughtfulness. He doesn't just listen, he appears to cogitate what he is told, to gauge it. That masterful attribute begets a funny outcome, when other actors will tell him something and then stop to see if he trusts it. And Judd shows us such a boldly defined personality, which makes their dialogue scenes, after she's been developed for awhile, engrossing. Kiss the Girls was directed by Gary Fleder, whose first feature, Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, boasted skill but too much artifice. Here he's more careful and restrained, with a story where the shades and details are as chilling as anything else. Here as in Seven, we get a steady feeling of not being able to see everything we believe we want to, as in a chase through the woods which Fleder makes effectively tense through its efficient use of space, never revealing the distance between victim and pursuer. When the film is over and we know all of its enigmas, there's one we'd like to know more about: What precisely are particulars of the histrionics between the two most nefarious characters? But being left with such a wringer is much more fulfilling in a way than being given the explanation in the conventional fast-sketch Freudian description. What we're also left with is the genuine feeling of having met two authentically defined people in the leads. Freeman and Judd are so good, you almost wish they'd chosen not to make a thriller at all, had just discovered a way to create a drama really sinking their teeth into their characterizations. All things considered, I would've preferred that movie.

Pretty good thriller. Lots of twists and turns to keep your attention. Great performances from Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. The story is Washington DC detective Dr. Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman) travels to North Carolina to investigate the apparent kidnapping of his niece (Gina Ravera). Aided by escaped kidnapee Kate McTiernan (Ashley Judd), Cross hunts down the kidnapper, who operates under the pseudonym "Cassanova". Pretty good watch, nice performance by casanova all up a good movie.