Yes, you've seen films like this many times before. Val Kilmer plays Jack Andrews, a private eye with a troubled past who owes money to the mob. He is hired by Fay, a beautiful but treacherous young woman (Kilmer's wife at the time, Joanne Whalley). She has stolen a briefcase full of hundred dollar bills from her brutal, determined boyfriend, who in turn has stolen it from the mob. Now Jack is pursued by the mob, the law and the boyfriend, but has even more to fear from his curvaceous client.

Kilmer is blank faced but vaguely sullen, and demonstrates his usual lack of acting range. Nonetheless, he seems well suited for his role. He plays a man who has largely given up on life due to a personal tragedy, and seems to be just going through the motions. He knows that his new girlfriend is no good, but she has a briefcase stuffed with cash, which represents opportunities for a new life. But while Jack may know the score, he's still a loser, and seems unlikely to keep control of the dangers surrounding him.

Fay is also an interesting, if familiar character. She is a thrill seeker to the point of self destruction, but remains confident that her irresistible beauty will bail her out of any trouble. Rotten to the core, she plans on spending the cash on a wild gambling spree in Las Vegas, as if she won't wake up broke and hung over some future morning. But then she can start over again with a new boyfriend, that she can con into committing crimes for her.

Kill Me Again was the first film directed by John Dahl, who would become well known within a few years for Red Rock West (1992) and The Last Seduction (1994). All three films were thrillers in the so called 'neo-noir' style, incorporating the murder intrigues and femme fatales of classic noir, but without the restrictions of the production code of that era.

Kill Me Again is easily the most obscure and under-rated of the three films, and I prefer it to the other two. I didn't find Linda Fiorentino's character credible in The Last Seduction, and I suspect that many who enjoy that film do so primarily on account of her physical attributes. My indifference to Red Rock West may be because of the lead: the only film of Nicolas Cage that I greatly respect is Raising Arizona (1987), and that undoubtedly has more to do with the Coen brothers than Francis Ford Coppola's nephew.

But I definitely enjoyed Kill Me Again. No, it isn't good enough to make me tape over my VCR copy of Double Indemnity (1944), the vastly superior Billy Wilder film which along with John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (1941) established the film noir genre.

Compared to those trailblazing films, Kill Me Again is certainly derivative. But in its way, it is influential as well. Its modest success led not only to Dahl's future directorial efforts, but Michael Madsen's sadistic con character would resurface in Reservoir Dogs (1992). Joanne Whalley's seductive and completely amoral femme fatale was hardly a cinema first, but she still bears strong resemblance to Annette Bening's character in The Grifters (1990).

Of course, it isn't essential for a film to be original. Ben Hur won a pile of Oscars in 1960, despite stealing dozens of scenes from the silent version made decades before. North by Northwest is one of Hitchcock's most beloved movies, despite having a plot similar to a half dozen or more of his earlier films. Kill Me Again is well cast, well written and directed. This is enough, even if the three lead characters all seem to have been lifted from dozens of earlier (and better known) Hollywood films.

An independent production, Kill Me Again did only modest business at the box office. Its only recognition came from the film festival in Cognac, France, where it won the Grand Prix. (69/100)

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Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older