KISS THE GIRLS

Less gory and blatantly perverted than many modern thrillers, KISS THE GIRLS is a well-crafted movie with an intelligent cast and script. Morgan Freeman, it seems, just can’t get enough of the moral, dignified policeman role. Here, his quest for the killer becomes personal, as his niece has recently become abducted in one of a series of kidnappings of young, beautiful, talented women.

The movie opens with Detective Alex Cross (Mr. Freeman) visiting a murder site in the North Carolina woods. One young woman has been tied to a tree and left for dead. Thankfully, Cross notices that the girl was not his niece. Then, the story turns to young doctor, Kate McTiernan (Ashley Judd), who practices in the research Triangle in North Carolina. From her own home, Kate is abducted and drugged, and taken to a cell where her captor, wearing a mask and calling himself Casanova, tells her not to cry out nor to try to escape. Later, the strong-willed Kate does cry out and discovers that many other young ladies are being held against their will, including Cross’s niece. When Casanova returns to drug Kate, she exercises her kick-boxing movies on his face, runs out the door and into the woods. Casanova chases her, trapping Kate at the edge of a cliff. With river raging below, Kate jumps to freedom.

The next memory she has is of Cross at her bedside asking her if she spoke with his niece. Saying yes, Kate becomes Cross’s partner in capturing the women-collecting Casanova. The duo surmise that their man operates on two coasts, in California and North Carolina. They travel to California, and almost capture their man, but he escapes. By deductive reasoning, they find that there is actually a partnership between two villains. A final confrontation arises when Kate meets the second villain, a man she already knows and hardly suspects.

The movie fails to be as complete as some thrillers because it doesn’t provide enough backstory and adequate motivation behind the crimes. All we really know is that the character is obsessed with young women. The movie would have been more engaging if it probed the psyche of the actual Casanova.

Both Judd and Freeman lend dignity to their roles. Likewise, Englishman Elwes sounds credible as a Southern-fried policeman. The photography is crisp, colorful and claustrophobic, while the direction and editing are taut, tight and tantalizing.

Moral quality and humanity are added with Freeman’s personal quest to rescue his niece, and Kate’s admission that she is praying for the personal safety of her fellow victims and their families. Also, the audience is spared most of the violence committed against the women. We don’t see the dead body on the tree, and we don’t see any rapes. The villains, while vile and extremely disturbed, don’t perform any on screen acts of perversion, unlike the cross-dressing villain in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. There is no sex or nudity.

KISS THE GIRLS will probably attract intelligent thriller fans, while people who prefer darker fare will shrug it off. It is a better, if not completely original, moral tale than many movies about psychokillers.