AnhartLinkin
This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.
Aneesa Wardle
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Dana
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
merklekranz
Totally predictable, totally unlikely, is the only way to describe this convoluted mess of a movie. Matt Dillon gets away with murder and no police are bright enough to figure out his game. I mean how exactly did he manage to hang somebody from the rafters in five minutes? How does he happen to conveniently manage to be in just the right place at just the right time?None of the characters are likable, and the whole film becomes nothing more than a "so what". This is truly a movie to avoid, because it is so insulting to the viewer. I hated everything about "A Kiss Before Dying", and do not understand how this rates a 5.3. To me it is a zero. - MERK
Robert J. Maxwell
Philadelphia, in which this tale is set, is a city with plenty of history but absolutely no flair. According to E. Digby Baltzell, that's because Philadelphia was founded by self-effacing Quakers, while Boston was founded by pompous overbearing Puritans.Take the University of Pennsylvania, from which Matt Dillon recently graduated. It's an Ivy League school chartered at about the same time as Harvard -- but who boasts of having gone to Penn? Nobody, that's who. The Main Line elite send their undergraduate sons to Princeton and only for post-graduate studies do they bring them back to Penn. Among the cognoscenti, I think the Wharton School of Finance at Penn is the equal of Harvard's Business School but so what? Quakers don't hold with prominence and celebrity. Even Benjamin Franklin, who FOUNDED the University of Pennsylvania, was born and raised in Boston. An athletic team of nearby Swarthmore once won a game. They were ashamed of it.Now I'm beginning to wonder if that isn't a little off the topic. But that leads me to wonder exactly how much attention the topic -- this film -- deserves.It's a confusing story. Dillon courts Sean Young, one of two identical twins, secretly. She's the daughter of uber-rich Max von Sydow, who hasn't got much more than a featured bit part in the movie. But then Young goes ahead and gets pregnant. Dillon's mental gears whirl. Young doesn't get along with her father to begin with. Maybe von Sydow will disinherit her if she admits she's pregnant. So Dillon does the only sensible thing.He tosses Sean Young Number One off the top of a tall building and begins courting Sean Young Number Two, the identical twin. The couple marry and after that it's all down hill as far as originality is concerned. You've seen it before in a dozen films. The upright Sean Young gradually unravels the hidden and pathological past of the man she's married to. The story ends with the requisite chase, this time through crummy back yards and railroad tracks. Dillon has been stabbed with a knife but, as in all these cliché-ridden movies, that doesn't even slow him down. He is finally run over by a train loaded with copper from Young's family. This is known in some circles as poetic justice. You know, undone by the symbol of his own ambition? In my circle, it's known as adventitious. I have a feeling, based on the clumsiness of the writing and dialog, that no symbolism was intended. Sometimes a train is just a train.Young is an interesting actress, stunningly beautiful in a Midwestern way, as if fed on corn and cream, and with a delightful little bump on the end of her model's nose, inviting a nibble. Given her off screen capers, who knows? Her voice sometimes betrays her. She sounds a little hoarse, like Debora Winger, and it comes out as phony for some reason. She has a splendid figure and was quite good in at least two films, "No Way Out" and a parody called "Fatal Instinct." Matt Dillon is interesting too. As an adult he was adequate in "To Die For" and in "Something About Mary." He had a dramatic role in the first and a comic role as a treacherous private eye in the second. Of course he's made some clunkers, including this one, where he is no more than a cardboard cut out of a homicidal psychopath. Every man has a right to give some poor performances but Dillon abuses the privilege.The direction is pedestrian, the score derivative ("Silence of the Lambs"), and the locations are partly in England and Wales.It's not an absolutely awful movie. It doesn't carry any message or insult the audience in some way. It's just not new. And if you're looking for a familiar pattern in which only a few mosaic tiles have been shifted around, you may find this soothing.
ereinion
I don't know what to make out of this movie. I guess its one of those movies that were MEANT to be good, but just didn't turn out to be that. What are the reasons? Well, lets see...the probably biggest reason was wrong casting of the leading lady. Sean Toung must be the most passive and expressionless actress ever, so instead of feeling sympathy for her, we only feel annoyed by her presence. Second problem is the plot: its too thin. Matt Dillon's character, tho a villain, is at first not introduced as a typical "peerless" killer type, but then as the film progresses he becomes just that. He murders both Dorrie's old boyfriend and her friend in a professional manner, without breaking a sweat. It all looks just too smooth for a guy thats not a professional killer. Also the way he just appears at the end, where he suddenly becomes DEUS EX MACHINA a'la John Ryder, it just looks unconvincing for some reason.This movie's theme is ambition, the thirst or hunger that, if big enough, can make a man possessed with it do anything. Even murder. But its at character study that this movie again fails. Despite losing her brother, sister and mother, Ellen remains on bad terms with her only remaining family member, her father. This is kinda strange, no? Even when he accepts Jonathan/Jay, she shuns his company and criticizes her fiancée/husband for spending too much time with him. Jonathan/Jay on other hand, is a sweet and nice guy who, when he's not killing, helps out Ellen in her work with drug addicts and he even helps a beaten up woman junkie/prostitute to a hospital. Ahem...this REALLY clashes with the image of a guy who kills to fulfill his ambitions, no? So what is he, a sort of Jekyll/Hyde character?? There are also just too few engaging characters in this movie and aside from Thor, Ellen's dad, there aren't ANY other major characters here, Ellen's friend from the social center being a poor candidate. Unfortunately, Max Von Sydow in the role of Thor Carlsson is not given enough time or space to really flourish in his deadpan role.So, this film just fell too short of achieving its goals because it simply had too little going for it. Even Matt Dillon, the only bright spot here, feels wasted in such a poorly conceived and unrealistic role. The plot, however thin, is the only thing that will keep you watching it and thats only because you wanna see how it ends. Although you deep down inside already know how: the wretched sister gets her revenge and gets the killer. This is a movie that wanted to show us the ugly, dark side of ambition...well, it certainly showed us that, but in a less satisfactory way than I hoped for. I give it a weak 5.
greenforest56
The casting in this picture was awful. The only person who could act was Max von Sidow. The rest of the cast it was painful to watch, painfully boring. The lead, Sean Young, was the worse. All the emotional range of a zombie and the intensity of drying paint. Neither she, nor anyone else, were really 'believable' as actors. It's not surprising that everyone who was in is this picture has faded off the radar. One must criticize the directing in that the director either 1) did not inspire the cast to greater effort 2) give them enough direction 3) or failed to see they were without talent. James Dearden did direct the classic 'Fatal Attraction', and co-wrote it, too. This seems to be his only real success. The major differences: he co-wrote 'Fatal Attraction', apparently writing on his own he is not very good. And, he had a much better cast.The script fails from a fairly predictable plot (predictability is not good in a murder mystery, duh) and unconvincing motivation for the killer (his daddy left him, so he kills, what, 3 people, maybe more…? How many would he have killed with bad potty training?) Matt Dillon's performance as the killer is as unconvincing as the script.
