# Kiss the Girls (1997 film)

Kiss the Girls is a 1997 American neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by Gary Fleder and starring Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, and Cary Elwes. The screenplay by David Klass is based on James Patterson's best-selling 1995 novel of the same name. A sequel titled Along Came a Spider was released in 2001.

## Plot

Washington D.C. Detective and forensic psychologist, Dr Alex Cross is devastated to learn that his niece, Naomi, a college student in Durham, North Carolina, has been missing for four days. Despite his family’s anxiety, Cross travels to Durham to investigate, determined to find her.
Upon arrival, Cross meets with local police and learns that multiple young women, including Naomi, are missing. He collaborates with Detectives Nick Ruskin and Davey Sikes, as well as FBI agents. Together, they visit a crime scene in the woods where the body of one of the missing women has been found, brutally murdered and tied to a tree, heightening Cross’s fears for Naomi's safety.
Meanwhile, Dr. Kate McTiernan, a doctor and kickboxer, is abducted from her home by a masked man who calls himself Casanova. She wakes up in a stone-walled room, heavily sedated, and is told by Casanova that he admires her talents and promises she won't suffer if she complies with his rules. Kate, however, is determined to escape. She discovers other women are held captive with her.
Kate eventually manages to overpower Casanova during one of his visits and escapes into the woods, jumping off a cliff into a river to ensure her freedom. She is found and taken to a hospital, where she recovers and agrees to help Cross in his investigation. She provides vital information about her captivity and describes Casanova.
Cross investigates further and discovers that a plastic surgeon in California, Dr. William Rudolph, had suspiciously ordered a large quantity of Sistol, a benzodiazepine drug, which was used to sedate the captives. Travelling together to California, Cross and Kate join forces with Sampson, Cross' partner, and Henry, an LAPD Detective, to begin surveilling Rudolph.
After staking out Rudolph's home, they follow him to a remote cabin in the woods. The investigation intensifies when they follow Rudolph to a nightclub. Kate, upon seeing Rudolph caress a woman's cheek, recognizes his touch and, believing he is Casanova, alerts Cross. Rudolph takes the woman from the nightclub to his cabin, where a chase ensues when the group hears her screaming, during which Rudolph escapes after shooting one of Sampson’s men and injuring Cross.
At Rudolph's home, the police uncover the identity of a second killer, named by the press as the Gentleman Caller. This killer is also involved in the abductions and is working in conjunction to and competition with Casanova. The two operate bicoastally, abducting women within days of one another and sharing images of their captives for the other to see. The police also discover a hidden freezer which contains mutilated body parts of his victims, distinguishing the Gentleman Caller's MO from Casanova's.
Back in North Carolina, with the help of Naomi’s boyfriend who is familiar with the area, Cross locates the hideout where the women are being held. Concurrently, Rudolph has also travelled to North Carolina, and has broken into Casanova's lair. He enrages Casanova when he tries to undermine his control of Naomi and the other captive women, who shoots at Rudolph, but intentionally misses. Upon hearing Cross enter the hideout, Casanova tells Rudolph to flee. In a climactic confrontation, Cross and the police rescue the captives including Naomi. Rudolph is killed by Cross in an ensuing chase, but Casanova escapes.
The FBI raid the hideout, and locate Casanova's fingerprints. Finally feeling safe, and with the belief that Casanova will be identified within a day, Kate invites Cross to her home for dinner before he returns back to D.C. Before Cross is due to arrive, Detective Ruskin arrives at Kate's home to check in on her. She welcomes him inside and, whilst her back is turned, he cuts her phone line.
In the meantime, Cross recognizes a similarity between Casanova’s handwriting and Ruskin’s signature. Realizing Ruskin is Casanova, Cross rushes to save Kate. Ruskin, now revealed as Casanova, attempts to rape and kill Kate. A fight ensues, breaking a gas line in the kitchen. Realising this, Ruskin takes out a lighter, threatening to ignite it. Cross arrives just in time to intervene. In the final struggle, Cross shoots Ruskin through a milk carton, preventing him from causing an explosion in Kate’s house. Casanova is finally dead, and Cross and Kate embrace as the police arrive.

## Cast

* Morgan Freeman as Alex Cross
* Ashley Judd as Kate McTiernan
* Cary Elwes as Casanova / Nick Ruskin
* Tony Goldwyn as William Rudolph
* Jay O. Sanders as Kyle Craig
* Bill Nunn as Sampson
* Brian Cox as Chief Hatfield
* Alex McArthur as Sikes
* Richard T. Jones as Seth Samuel
* Jeremy Piven as Henry Castillo
* William Converse-Roberts as Dr. Wick Sachs
* Gina Ravera as Naomi Cross
* Roma Maffia as Dr. Ruocco

## Production
### Filming

Principal photography began on April 16, 1996. The film was shot two weeks on location in North Carolina on the streets of Durham, in nearby county parks, and outside a Chapel Hill, North Carolina residence. The police station was constructed in a downtown Durham warehouse. The majority of filming occurred in the Los Angeles area, with locations including the Disney Ranch, The Athenaeum at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, a house in the Adams historic district of Los Angeles, and on the campus of the University of Southern California in University Park. Designed by American production designer Nelson Coates, the majority of the sets, including the tunnels and underground chambers, were constructed in sound stages on the Paramount Studios lot. Filming was completed on July 10.

## Release

The film premiered at the Deauville Film Festival in September 1997 before opening on 2,271 screens in the US the following month. It earned $13,215,167 in its opening weekend and a total of $60,527,873 in the US, ranking #28 in domestic revenue for the year.
The film was not shown in some theaters in central Virginia at the time of release, due to the unsolved murders of three teenage girls in the area. This decision was out of respect for the families and surrounding communities. The murders were eventually solved and attributed to Richard Evonitz.

## Reception
### Critical reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 34% of 35 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "Detective Alex Cross makes his inauspicious cinematic debut in Kiss the Girls, a clunky thriller that offers few surprises." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 46 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.
Stephen Holden of The New York Times said the film "is cut from the same cloth as The Silence of the Lambs, but the piece of material it uses has the uneven shape and dangling threads of a discarded remnant.... [It] begins promisingly, then loses its direction as the demand for accelerated action overtakes narrative logic". Holden writes of Morgan Freeman that he "projects a kindness, patience and canny intelligence that cut against the movie's fast pace and pumped-up shock effects. His performance is so measured it makes you want to believe in the movie much more than its gimmicky jerry-rigged [sic] plot ever permits".
In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half out of four stars and said, "David Klass, the screenwriter, gives Freeman and Judd more specific dialogue than is usual in thrillers; they sound as if they might actually be talking with each other and not simply advancing plot points.... [They] are so good, you almost wish they'd decided not to make a thriller at all - had simply found a way to construct a drama exploring their personalities".
Rita Kempley of The Washington Post called the film "a tense, scary, perversely creepy thriller" and added that "David Klass ... blessedly deletes the graphic descriptions of torture and rape included in the novel. Unfortunately, he also neglects to include any explanation of Casanova's behavior. Otherwise Kiss the Girls does what it's supposed to do. A solid second film from director Gary Fleder, it's sure to set pulses racing and spines tingling". In the same newspaper, Desson Thomson felt that "the movie ... operates on the crime-movie equivalent of automatic pilot. It takes off, flies and lands without much creative intervention".
In the San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Stack thought "the story ... goes on too long. It has too many confusing plot twists and keeps losing energy. Blame it on Hollywood excess, or director Gary Fleder's uncertain hand. A cut of 15 minutes would have helped". He was more impressed by the film's stars, calling Morgan Freeman "compelling" and "a hero of extraordinary power that comes almost entirely from his unemotional, calculating calm", and stating that Ashley Judd "gives the sometimes plodding drama a dose of intense vitality. This young actress is getting awfully good at turning potentially gelatinous characters into substantive people who spark viewer interest".

### Awards and nominations

Judd was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture Drama at the 1998 Satellite Awards.

## Sequel and reboot

Four years after Kiss the Girls, a film adaptation of Along Came a Spider was released. Morgan Freeman reprised his role. Later, the franchise was rebooted with a 2012 adaptation of the novel Cross, titled Alex Cross, starring Tyler Perry in the title role.