Judas Kiss
Directed by Sebastian Gutierrez.
Another Badlands/True Romance southern-belle monologue? Another movie about kidnappers and cops? Who cares? Something about sitting back and letting the plot unfold amongst sex, torture and crafty characterisation — what could be more entertaining?
Novelist turned first time writer/director Sebastian Gutierrez didn’t hit it big with Judas Kiss because of it’s unique story-line. It follows the modern-day crime-thriller schemata pretty much to a T, but, as in so many quality crime-thrillers, it’s the matching of the characters that makes the movie.
Carla Gugino may not be new to the silver screen having played with such heavy weights as Nicholas Cage and Antonio Banderas, but she literally explodes in this picture as if it was a dynamic film debut. She’s the leader of the sexy and stylish criminal crew and looks the part; however, clichés are not part of her repartée. She plays the femme fatale with a careful blend of assuredness and anxiety and a sober mix of clever no-nonsense and human innocence. She’s perfect. Her crew consists of Junior, Ruben and Lizard. Junior, Oz born and raised, LA Confidential star Simon Baker-Denny, plays her sexed-up, con-junkie boyfriend. German mega-star Til Schweiger is Ruben, the trigger-happy childlike hit-man who refreshingly and realistically misplaces or displaces his English. Gil Bellows, best known for playing Billy on TV’s Ally McBeal, plays Lizard, the straight-on brains behind the kidnapping. All fit quite nicely to form a winning team. Of course the kidnappers never fully win in the movies. Even if they get the money, there’s always a certain price to pay. That’s what makes an average crime-thriller a better-than-average crime-thriller.
Oddly cast Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson play the coppers and get away with it. Obviously, they can act. Rickman, the villain you loved to hate in such films as Die Hard and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, works wonderfully as the alcoholic, cynical, seen-it-all-before detective — he’s got the squinting down, to be sure. Thompson, who’s best known and loved for her English period pieces, plays the FBI agent and, dare I say, plays it a bit too typically butch. The two have worked together in the cinema before and have a good deal of chemistry but their banter probably looked better on paper. I didn’t believe the quick-witted and clever dialogue, and the sexual tension they playfully display seems too rehearsed.
Of course dirty politicians (Hal Holbrook always fits his role, even as the ‘bad guy’) have their day, furnishing further characterisation and more twists to the plot and creating a very subtle it’s-not-always-whatyou-think reality.
The accents waver from the typically Cajun to the Gone-with-the-Wind flavour but, for the most part, add to the feel of the film. The sultry heat of the Delta mysteriously takes over during tense moments in the hide-out and disappears completely when the coppers hold our attention but, again, contribute to the feel of the film. But it’s difficult to get caught up in technicalities when clearly the movie’s focus is to take you along for a fun-filled, fucked-up ride through twenty-four hours of will-it-pay-off claustrophobia and who-dunnit detective undertakings. Judas Kiss is plain and simply an hour and a half of good dirty fun.
Heather Johnson
