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KILL ME LATER

"Breezy Thriller"

What You Need To Know:

In KILL ME LATER, a young bank officer named Shawn finds her relationship with a married man, Matthew, going sour, especially when she discovers his wife is pregnant. She contemplates suicide on the roof, but that brings the cops, who interrupt a robbery of the bank where Shawn and Matthew work. Charlie, the head bank robber, takes Shawn hostage, but she forces him to promise to kill her later in return for her help in his escape. He agrees, but reneges on his promise. A series of comical twists, however, keeps them together and leads to a budding romance between them.

Now out on video, KILL ME LATER is an entertaining thriller that only played briefly in a few theaters in 2001. Despite its terrible title and shaky subject matter, there are some moral resolutions to its story. Director Dana Lustig shoots his story in a light, comical manner. Selma Blair and Max Beesley as Shawn and Charlie have a comical chemistry together that makes the movie enjoyable to watch. KILL ME LATER does, however, contain some strong foul language, implied sexual situations and a brief image of partial female nudity.

Content:

(RoRo, B, H, LLL, VV, S, NN, A, D, M) Romantic worldview with moral & humanist elements; 31 obscenities, 5 strong profanities & 7 mild profanities; solid action violence & suicide theme, but suicide is rejected, includes men rob bank delivery truck, man hit, woman thinks about jumping from roof of tall building, chase scenes, cops shoot a couple robbers, & two people jump from bridge in a dangerous leap; implied adultery & photo of half-naked woman on playing card; man has pornographic playing card of half-naked woman; alcohol use; smoking; and, miscellaneous immorality, such as bank robbery, crime & suicide rebuked.

More Detail:

Despite its terrible title, KILL ME LATER is one of the more successful thrillers of 2001. It’s better produced than most of the bloated thrillers that the bigger studios put out these days. It doesn’t have big stars, however, and didn’t get the marketing it deserved, so it’s pretty much gone straight to the video stores after a very brief run in a few major cities.

In the story, a young bank officer named Shawn finds her relationship with a married man, Matthew, going sour. She finds no comfort in her father, who’s got himself a much younger wife and a new baby. A confrontational meeting with Matthew at the bank where they both work results in her discovery that Matthew’s wife is herself pregnant, a fact which Matthew failed to mention. Shawn takes a bottle of booze up to the roof of their building and contemplates suicide. This brings the attention of the police, who come just in time to interrupt a robbery of the bank’s delivery truck.

The head robber escapes to the roof and holds a cop at bay by threatening to kill Shawn. Shawn, of course, says go ahead and kill her, but the robber, an ex-con from England named Charlie, convinces her to help him escape. She agrees to do so, but only if he promises to kill her later. Later, however, he refuses to do so, and even stops her from committing suicide. Then, she tells him that she’ll promise not to kill herself if he gives her $41,327 from the robbery. Therein begins a budding, halting romance as Charlie and Shawn try to hook up with the robber who took the delivery truck and the money.

Director Dana Lustig shoots this story in a light, comical manner, helped by the funny script co-written with Annette Goliti Gutierrez. Selma Blair and Max Beesley as Shawn and Charlie have a comical chemistry together that makes the movie enjoyable to watch. The movie does not treat the topic of suicide too lightly, although there are some jokes made about the suicidal circumstances that bring Charlie and Shawn together. As one of the policemen chasing Charlie says at one point, statistically, there are more suicides than homicides.

Even so, however, KILL ME LATER deserves an extreme caution for the situations surrounding its suicide theme, not to mention the foul language and sexual implications in the plot. By the way, Shawn and Charlie do not really profit from Charlie’s bank robbery, but they do live happily ever after. Charlie, in fact, gives up his life of crime and Shawn only wanted the money to pay off her uncaring father for all the child support he gave to her late mother. Eventually, they seem to be eventually rewarded for the more moral decisions they finally make.