review for Kiss or Kill on AllMovie

This grim neo-noir isn't as polished as, say, Michael Winterbottom's I Want You, but its tight screenplay is full of excellent throwaway details, mordant wit, and subtle insight. Writer, director, and producer Bill Bennett keeps things flatly realistic rather than explicitly gritty, his jump cuts adding to the paranoid air but also detracting a bit from the flow. Meanwhile, lead actors Frances O'Connor and Matt Day, both veterans of Love and Other Catastrophes, seethe with unexpressed anxiety and dysfunctional love (Bennett's screenplay was inspired, in part, by Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run"). The cop characters, played by Andrew S. Gilbert and Bennett vet Chris Haywood, enjoy a suitably twisted relationship and some nicely sick dialogue; their recruitment of crafty Aboriginal tracker Possum Harry (John Clark) is one of the screenplay's many subversive touches. As the protagonists travel across the outback, murder in their wake, their journey takes on a suitably surrealist edge thanks to the tic-laden characters they meet. Things never, however, digress into affectedly quirky territory. An understated antidote to such overblown couples-on-the-lam flicks as Kalifornia and Natural Born Killers, Kiss or Kill was a welcome critical win for Bennett after the disappointment of the Hollywood-funded Two if By Sea.