good back-story, and good acting

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This is probably one of my favorite movies.I first saw Kiss or Kill when it first came out in 1997.It is not your run of the mill road movie it is more complex.There is a sense of paranoia between the lead characters throughout which adds to the mystery of the whole movie.I highly recommend this movie and I hope it comes out on DVD soon.9 out of 10****

"Kiss of Kill" tells of an Aussie "Bonnie & Clyde" couple on the run through the boonies of South Australia. This austere flick is a mediocre watch at best with the only interesting facet being we don't really know which of the couple is doing all the killing. Unfortunately, we're not given a reason to care about anyone in the film save our natural desire to see the cops catch the bad guys. Hence, we remain casual and detached observers trying to wring whatever interest there is to be found from the meager substance of the story which echoes of many films of the past.Footnote: IFC preshow factoids claimed it took Bennett 10 years to write the screenplay and the script was zero pages long. Whatever.

The attention-grabbing beginning of this movie finds two scam artists, having accidentally killed a victim, stumbling on the possibility of blackmailing a football star, and setting in motion a quirky road movie with hints of black humour.I have to say, this sketchy synopsis recalls the type of plotline the Coen brothers might use. This is slightly misleading - the film is darker, less gimmicky and ultimately less fun than standard Coen brothers fare - but nonetheless the film does share several of the brothers' failings - noticeably an inability to create a consistent tone or convincing psychologies for the lead characters. We know the most important character suffered severe trauma as a child, yet we learn little about her other than that, and her boyfriend seems an even bigger mystery. Also, to illustrate the problems the film has with tone, the film has noirish themes, but has incongruously bright sunny photography. It also contains one brilliantly funny sequence, in which a cop finds he knows his partner less well than he thought, but frankly this scene looks like it comes from another movie.However, the film is always watchable. It does look attractive, even if its main stylistic tic - continual jump cuts, presumably in homage to Godard - does jar after a while. Moreover, a brash, confident central performance from Frances O'Connor definitely holds the attention, and I did feel that I cared for her basically hard-to-like character.Although the film is only a partial success, it still looks like the type of film that could develop a cult following.

The story is clever, the direction is fresh and original, the dialogue sparkles. A whodunnit of a different variety. I can't wait to see another movie by this director/writer.