"What's in the box?"
The first ten minutes or so of Kiss Me Deadly are amazing. A woman wearing nothing but a trench coat runs on a highway from an unknown pursuer. She stops in the middle of the road to flag down a car. The man tells her to get in and they start driving. The then credits roll up the screen in reverse as they drive, kind of Star Wars like. Deadly Kiss Me. Robert Aldrich Directed by.
Who is this mysterious woman? Who is chasing her and why? These are all questions that the man asks her but she reveals very little other than her name Christina and these simple instructions: "Get me to that bus stop and forget you ever saw me. If we don't make it to the bus stop... remember me." The mysterious pursuers capture the two where Christina is tortured and killed and the man hospitalized after surviving his car being pushed over a cliff. The man wakes up in a hospital and must figure out what the hell is going on. And so Kiss Me Deadly begins with one of the best intros you can find in a film; unfortunately the rest of the film doesn't quite match the lofty expectations of the beginning. Nevertheless, it is still an intriguing and unique film noir.
The man turns out to be Mike Hammer, a private detective who specializes in divorce cases. Hammer is a fitting last name because he is as blunt and forceful as his name would suggest. He gets his way by grabbing them by the collar and slapping them around, whether they be thugs or old men working behind a counter. Mike realizes that he's stumbled upon something big with this mysterious woman's death and is determined to figure out who killed her and why. This process of uncovering the mystery however feels more like a wild, or rather slow, goose chase as we follow Mike from location to location, scene to scene, trying to piece everything together. It could be very possible I wasn't paying close enough attention but there were definitely moments where I wasn't sure what Mike was looking for or even doing in a scene.
SPOILER SORT OF
I actually had no idea when I put the film on that Kiss Me Deadly is actually a science fiction film noir. It all has to do with the secret that Christina was hiding. It wasn't money or jewels or incriminating photos of politicians, but rather a mysterious box whose contents aren't specified but we can have a pretty good guess at. It is hot to the touch and the contents within emit a bright glow. There is a very iconic looking screenshot from the film that I would have used at the beginning, but I was afraid it gave too much away. It is the picture of the girl opening the box with the glow reflecting off her face. It is very reminiscent of the briefcase from Pulp Fiction. In fact I would not be surprised at all if this film is where Tarantino got that from. It is also quite similar to the ark from Indiana Jones. The contents of the box is a play on the Cold War fears at the time of the atomic bomb. I was pretty surprised by the direction the film took in this regard, but I thought it was a really interesting concept.
END OF SPOILER SORT OF
The film definitely has a noir style. I noticed all the odd slanted angles of the camera and the play of shadows. Maybe it is the brightness setting of my new TV and the Blu-ray player, but this film isn't as dark or shadowy as other film noir I have seen. This film seemed strangely bright for its style in some instances.
Overall I thought the film started and ended excellently; it was the middle portions that sort of let me down, but even then it was still pretty decent.
Grade: B
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