Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2019
Images from the Internet
Kiss Kiss
Directed by Dallas King
Red Rabbit Pictures / Cleopatra Entertainment / MVD
Entertainment
99 minutes, 2019
Oh, Jeez.
I have oft touted that when a film takes a
group of different tropes or clichés and mixes them all together, something new
and interesting can be sired. But other times, if it doesn’t go deep enough, it
becomes plebeian and ho-hum. That being said, it also depends on what the
tropes are and of what interests they include whether it is on the side of
interesting or blasé.
Take this film for example. You have a military
conspiracy to create a better soldier through chemistry. This is hardly anything
new, going back as far off the top of my head to Captain America. Another here
is women-on-women violence and love/sex, from lesbianism to Mixed Martial Arts.
In bikinis of course. In the real world, there’s the women’s football league
where they play the game in underwear; this is a similar idea and I am willing
to bet influenced this story. Now, MMA is after my time. I used to love boxing
and wrestling (I’m old enough to say I was a huge Bruno Sammartino [d. 2018] and
Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini fan), and I’ve seen a few MMA matches on the telly, but
I’ve kinda grown out of it.
 |
| Natasha Hopkins |
In the first act of the film (i.e., the
beginning 20 minutes) we meet four friends who are exotic dancers… excuse me, “ladies”
(as one character insists), since we see sensual movements, but no nudity. They
get an invite to a wine tasting, which turns into wine drinking (have the
writers never been to a wine tasting, where you sniff and sip but don’t swallow?),
which turns into a cocaine frenzy, and to no one’s surprise, a drug-fueled
kidnapping by the military.
Y’see, the US military is trying to make
stronger and controllable soldiers, so of course they use barely dressed women
dancers as their sample group. Say what? Under the control of this drug, they
fight other women and, to no surprise, each other, to the death.
Here is a reason why I found this annoying:
there is no antagonist for nearly any of the actual fights. The women are just
punching up each other. If there were an enemy, such as Russians, Chinese,
Koreans, Syrians, whatever, it would be easy to take sides and the fighting
might be fun and give you someone to boo or cheer for; here, it’s just our four
friends and a few random women with no backstory – not that there’s much of
that for anyone other than two of our heroines who are lovers; not inclusive to
either each other or gender, as this fantasy was written by men (same issue I
had with 1997’s Chasing Amy).
The writing is quite basic with no great lines
or witty plot lines; even the double-crosses can be seen coming due to lazy scripting.
The filmmaking tries to be arty but looks more like a Cinemax softcore porn
shoot (told ya I was old) thanks to the lighting and the editing, and the
acting basically consists of anger – even before the drugs are administered –
and growling. Also, all the fighting and the sex scenes are filmed the same way,
with colorful lights and slo-mo. Many shots of the action and the onlookers looks
like it could have been lifted directly out of the hardcore sex film Café Flesh
(1982).
 |
| Tamra Dae |
All the women have silly names, like Kiss
(star of the film, Natasha Hopkins), Treasure, Kurious, Fortune, Dream and Promise
aka Tia (Aunt?). Yeah, the bad guy/head of the army program is mostly
just called Gibson (Robert Wagner playing a stereotype), but at least he is
given real dialogue, relatively speaking, other than, “No! Please!” and “Grrrrrrrr”
(note that a lion’s growl is added over the sound of the participant’s scream).
With a mild spoiler alert here, to give you an
example of the attitude of the film which is obviously geared towards teen boys
and incels, we are presented a male character who has no trouble or punishment
for abusing these women by making them fight to the death, but it is only until
he is responsible for the death of another male does he get some comeuppance. Ugh.
Lots of extras come with this DVD. The first
up is “The Origin Story: An Homage to ‘Alice in Wonderland’” (13:05): At the
beginning, director King explains how he equates the characters and events comparing
it to “Alice,” and it somewhat makes sense in a very loose way, but then he says,
“The theme of this film is about women’s independence.” What?!?! By
having them literally shackled and forced to fight to the death? Where is this,
Alabama? Anyway, most of the rest of this featurette is about how the film came
about and the envisioning of each character, and is somewhat interesting, even
if its ideology is kind of twisted around.
 |
| Robert Wagner |
Next, “The Kiss Style: Lights, Make-up and More,”
is just about that, though mostly about make-up, which is understandable
considering each woman wears her own style of war paint
(appropriation? I won’t go there now). At least
this is short (5:48). More interesting considering the nature of the film as it
makes sense, “It’s Fight Night: Choreography in Action,” is a bit longer than
the others (18:36). This is quite satisfying in that way in that the director
and choreographer describe how each fighter is different. Again, no problem
with the fights per se, it’s the motivation behind it that irked me. Then there
is “Confessions of a Director: Director’s Chair Perspective” (8:11). This is
kind of a Making Of, except the whole focus – even the interviews with the crew
– is about the director. Whatever, it comes across as a mass ego piece.
The seven brief Deleted Scenes were right to be
excised. They are mostly under a minute and don’t really add anything to the story.
The Dossier and Stills choicer gives the contact info for the cast and crew,
and 3:05 of stills of the cast and film, over music. We are also given the trailer
and a bunch of other cool Cleopatra coming attractions.
Of course, the centerpiece is the commentaries.
The first one is with the Director King and actor/Producer Wagner. They discuss
each scene in some detail as they turn up and yet manage not to get too deep about
what they meant by the particular shot, and other anecdotes (“That horse barn
was really there, we didn’t build it”). There is a second commentary by King
and the Director of Photography, but I’m just burned out by this and my
interest is on my next review. That tells you something about this film.
I came away from the film feeling annoyed more
than being filled with ennui (it’s certainly not boring) but maybe I’m too old
for its market subject. And I happen to like both a good story and to think –
even with a cheesy film – while the action is going on.
No comments:
Post a Comment