David Caruso

  • Kiss of Death (1995)

    Kiss of Death (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2020) The first thing anyone will notice about Kiss of Death is—holy moly, what a good cast of actors: David Caruso (back when he thought TV stardom led to a cinema career), Samuel L. Jackson (looking young!), Nicolas Cage (as a crime lord!), Helen Hunt, Stanley Tucci (with some hair!), Michael Rapaport, Ving Rhames… I mean, that’s interesting. The second thing one notices after the credits is—wow, this was a completely unremarkable crime thriller. Directed in solid but unspectacular fashion by Barbet Schroeder, it’s an update to the 1947 film noir classic that transposes the story in the 1990s, but doesn’t really do anything all that exceptional with it all. It’s not uninteresting—at the very least, you can say that it’s watchable without trouble. But it’s not anything more: moments where the film is overwrought (thank you, Nicolas Cage) almost give a glimpse into what this Kiss of Death could have been with more verve from everyone. In its current state, though, it’s having a really hard time distinguishing itself from the middle of the pack of 1990s crime thrillers: admittedly a good decade for those, but not an excuse for a film that doesn’t quite reach its objectives.

  • Session 9 (2001)

    Session 9 (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2018) It doesn’t take much more than an abandoned hospital, sombre cinematography and a few crazy characters to have the basics of a moody horror movie. Alas, Session 9 doesn’t go any further than that to actually deliver anything memorable. While David Caruso is fine in the lead role, other actors just pass through the film with indifferent performances. Plot-wise, this isn’t anything we’ve seen before, and while one late-movie twist works fine, the rest seems to recycle familiar material. I’m really not a big fan of the early-2000s digital cinematography, which is as muddy as anything done at the time using those tools could be. Writer/director Brad Anderson has done much better (The Machinist) and much worse (The Vanishing on the Street), so Session 9 is a middle-of-the-pack early effort for him. Unfortunately, there isn’t much more to say about the film. It operates in a specific sub-genre, using defined elements and never going outside that zone. Fans of that kind of stuff will like it, while others may feel impatient at the way it advances, or rather doesn’t.