General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Kiss of Death (1995 film)

Kiss of Death is a 1995 American crime thriller directed by Barbet Schroeder, starring David Caruso as an ex-convict forced to inform on a Queens crime boss played by Nicolas Cage. It is a loose remake of the 1947 film noir of the same name, with a screenplay by novelist Richard Price from a story by Eleazar Lipsky, and it was released by 20th Century Fox on April 21, 1995.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director / producers	Barbet Schroeder (director and producer), with Susan Hoffman¹
Writers	Screenplay by Richard Price; story by Eleazar Lipsky; based on the 1947 screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer¹^•³
Principal cast	David Caruso (Jimmy Kilmartin), Nicolas Cage (Little Junior Brown), Samuel L. Jackson (Calvin Hart), Helen Hunt (Bev Kilmartin), Kathryn Erbe (Rosie)¹
Release	April 21, 1995 (United States), distributed by 20th Century Fox; shown at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival¹^•⁴
Runtime / rating	101 minutes, rated R for violence, nudity and strong language²^•⁵
Box office	$14,942,422 domestic gross on a $40,000,000 production budget; opening weekend $5,317,066 in 1,623 theaters⁵
Critical reception	68% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 41 reviews; 38% on the audience Popcornmeter⁶

Spoilers

Plot

Jimmy Kilmartin (David Caruso) is a former car thief and recovering alcoholic in Queens who has gone straight to support his wife Bev (Helen Hunt) and their family.² His cousin Ronnie (Michael Rapaport) pressures him into one last job, driving a carrier of stolen cars for the gangster Little Junior Brown. The convoy is surrounded by police, a panicked accomplice fires a shot, and a police officer is wounded; Jimmy is caught and faces a long prison sentence.⁴

While serving his time, Jimmy refuses to inform on his associates, out of a personal code that treats ratting as an unforgivable sin.⁷ Years later, the ambitious district attorney Frank Zioli (Stanley Tucci) offers him a deal: early release in exchange for going undercover to gather evidence against Little Junior Brown, a violent, erratic enforcer for his father Big Junior (Philip Baker Hall), who operates an auto-theft ring and a strip club called Baby Cakes.²^•⁸ Little Junior takes a liking to Jimmy and brings him into his inner circle, which pleases the investigators but leaves Jimmy facing death if his deception is discovered.⁷ Detective Calvin Hart (Samuel L. Jackson) works with Jimmy on the infiltration.⁶

Relationship to the 1947 film

The 1995 film remakes Kiss of Death (1947), directed by Henry Hathaway from a Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer screenplay based on Eleazar Lipsky's Oscar-nominated story, in which Richard Widmark played the giggling killer Tommy Udo, a role that made him a star.²^•⁹ According to director Barbet Schroeder, by the time he began shooting, "only the title and one plot point remained" from the 1947 original.¹⁰ The remake also omits the original's most famous scene, in which Udo pushes an old woman in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs; the filmmakers did not ask Cage to compete with Widmark's performance.¹¹ The 1947 story had already been remade once before, as the 1958 Western The Fiend Who Walked the West.¹²

Production and cast

The film was produced and distributed by 20th Century Fox, photographed by Luciano Tovoli, edited by Lee Percy, designed by Mel Bourne, and scored by Trevor Jones.¹ David Caruso, then the early star of the television series NYPD Blue, left television to make the film, and it marked his first leading role in a movie.⁸^•² The supporting cast includes Stanley Tucci, Michael Rapaport, Ving Rhames, Philip Baker Hall, Anthony Heald, Hope Davis, and Anne Meara.¹³ Richard Price, who wrote the screenplay, appears briefly as a city clerk.¹³

The film was shown in the Séances spéciales section of the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.⁴

Reception and box office

Commercial performance. Released wide on April 21, 1995, the film opened third for the weekend with $5,317,066 and finished with a domestic gross of $14,942,422, all of it earned in the United States. Against a production budget of $40,000,000, worldwide box office was 0.4 times the budget.⁵

Critical response. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 68% Tomatometer from 41 reviews, with a critics consensus crediting the ensemble cast and atmosphere while noting that the script provides only sporadic bursts of tension; the audience Popcornmeter score is 38%.⁶ Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, found the film disjointed and criticized Caruso's lead performance as too laid-back to carry the movie, while judging Cage's Little Junior Brown played "with style and bravado".² The Washington Post's Hal Hinson wrote that Cage "dominates the camera, stealing scenes by the sheer intensity of his inimitable strangeness", and that Price's script becomes muddled once the undercover plot begins.⁸ Caruso received a Razzie Award nomination in 1996.¹⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026