I must be honest, I’ve grown a little tired of serial killers, both on the printed page and on celluloid. But I’d seen Fleder’s first movie, Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, which had nice clear visuals, a brilliant cast, good pacing and a startling script from the great Scott Rosenberg.

So when Kiss The Girls came along, I went along hoping for more of the same. And I got nice clear visuals, brilliant cast, and… er… absolutely bobbins storyline. It’s based on a book by James Patterson, and as might be expected from a former head of an advertising agency, it pulls together a lot of elements from previous blockbusters, mainly Silence of the Lambs and Seven. What it hasn’t got is any of the narrative drive of those movies, which I thought were disappointing in themselves.

The plot is about a loony kidnapping a few bimbos and keeping them in what appears to be a dungeon, before offing them one by one. There’s not as much bloodshed as you might expect, so it’s not particularly frightening, and more damagingly there’s absolutely no reason to identify with any of the prospective victims except for one. However there is some dubious emphasis on women tied to furniture and sitting around in expensive underwear , giving the whole thing a pervy feel, and some of the dialogue isn’t the sort of thing your granny would like.

As I said before, it’s perfect casting. Middle-aged weary black cop couldn’t be anyone else but Morgan Freeman. Pretty but smart kick-boxing female doctor (??) is played by Ashley Judd, probably the only actress around right now who could make it remotely believable. In the supporting cast you’ve got a who’s who of suspicious types: Brian Cox (the original Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter), Alex McArthur (serial killer in Friedkin’s Rampage, the De Niro character in the original version of Heat, and even worse, Madonna’s boyfriend in the video for Papa Don’t Preach), Cary Elwes (bad guy from Twister), and assorted other shady blokes. A big problem is that there just aren’t enough suspects, once you’ve established by voiceover and silhouette that half of these are red herrings.

As usual the cops go against all established procedure, so it ends up with the central characters isolated despite having half the resources of the local police force wandering around scratching their heads. There’s some very funny dialogue with the supposedly-clever Ashley Judd character in a kitchen with the psycho, and asking him “pass me that large chopping knife”, there’s a novel use of a pint of milk (and if it didn’t come in cartons this movie would have ended very differently) and most of the performances are good without having a lot to work with.

I’ve made it sound like a bad movie, and it’s not at all. It’s very nicely lit, composed and edited, and the individual scenes are well crafted. However it isn’t at all exciting, which is the first requirement for this sort of movie. Fleder is still a director to watch, as can be judged from his upcoming movies (see IMDB), but he’ll have to make sure that his attention to visual detail doesn’t work against the vitality of the stories.

Mild Peril Rating:

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