Taglines: Little Junior Brown. He rules the streets. He owns the game. But he doesn’t own all of the players.
Kiss of Death movie storyline. Jimmy Kilmartin is an ex-con living in Astoria in the New York City borough of Queens, trying to stay clean and raising a daughter with his wife Bev. They are both recovering alcoholics.
Bev leaves Jimmy alone to go to an AA meeting. While she is gone, Jimmy is awoken by his cousin Ronnie who is in desperate need of a driver to help him move some stolen cars. Jimmy tries to eject Ronnie, knowing that he could go back to prison just for being seen with him. Ronnie’s right ring finger is broken, and he confesses that if Jimmy does not help him move the cars, Little Junior Brown will kill him.
Little Junior Brown is an asthmatic psychopath. Enraged that they are so behind schedule, he insists that Ronnie move the four trucks full of stolen cars in a caravan, instead of staggering them to avoid detection. The caravan draws the attention of the police, and when they arrive at the Brooklyn Navy Yard to unload the cars, the police arrive. During the arrests, Jimmy’s passenger shoots at the police. The bullet goes through Jimmy’s hand and just below the right eye of Detective Calvin Hart.
The lawyer for the Brown crime family, Jack Gold, promises Jimmy that Bev will be taken care of if he takes the rap without naming his co-conspirators. Ronnie shorts Bev on her allowance, giving her only $150 of the $400 a week that the Browns intended for her. Bev agrees to work for Ronnie at his chop shop just south of Shea Stadium.
On her first day, she witnesses Ronnie beating a man who tried to sell him a stolen car. She drinks a Rolling Rock, and goes with Ronnie to Baby Cakes, the strip club owned by the Browns. She drinks vodka and wakes the next morning in Ronnie’s bed. Horrified at her relapse, she rushes out of Ronnie’s house and steals his car. She drives head-on into a semi-truck in the street and dies.
Given a supervised release for her funeral, Jimmy listens to Ronnie’s lame explanation for why Bev died in his car. Bev’s sister Rosie explains that she never returned home the night before her death. Convinced of Ronnie’s complicity in Bev’s death, Jimmy agrees to turn state’s witness. He names all of the people involved in the Navy Yards fiasco, except Ronnie. When the cops arrest everyone but Ronnie, the Browns are convinced that he is the snitch. Little Junior Brown visits Ronnie’s shop and proceeds to beat Ronnie to death in his office as retaliation.
Kiss of Death is a 1995 crime American thriller film starring David Caruso, Samuel L. Jackson, Nicolas Cage, Helen Hunt, Ving Rhames, and Stanley Tucci, directed by Barbet Schroeder. The film is a very loosely based remake of the 1947 film noir classic of the same name that starred Victor Mature, Brian Donlevy, and Richard Widmark. It was screened out of competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. Like the original Kiss of Death, the film was released by 20th Century Fox.
Kiss of Death (1995)
Directed by: Barbet Schroeder
Starring: David Caruso, Kathryn Erbe, Nicolas Cage, Helen Hunt, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Rapaport, Ving Rhames, Stanley Tucci, Philip Baker Hall, Katie Sagona
Screenplay by: Richard Price
Production Design by: Mel Bourne
Cinematography by: Luciano Tovoli
Film Editing by: Lee Percy
Costume Design by: Theadora Van Runkle
Set Decoration by: Roberta J. Holinko
Music by: Trevor Jones
MPAA Rating: R for violence, nudity and strong language.
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: April 21, 1995
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