Main Crew: prod, Bill Bennett; co-prod, Corrie Soeterboek; dir, Bill Bennett; writ, Bill Bennett; dop, Malcolm McCulloch; ed, Henry Dangar; prod des, Andrew Plumer.
Kiss or Kill is no ordinary road movie. Writer-director Bill Bennett's latest effort is an extreme, baroque, almost to the point of being surreal in style, psychological thriller. Drawing from the alternative, fast paced style of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994), and Godard's Breathless (1959), Bennett's film is cut in a jagged, but slick, form that draws the audience into his narrative.
Bill Bennett establishes his intent towards a fast-paced style and unpredictable narrative early in the work with a shocking introductory scene that leaves the audience, breathless, to ponder upon the fragility of the human condition. Jump-cut editing was used to create a fragmented version of reality through which unpredictable events flow, unbalancing Nikki's life. Nikki (later played by Frances O'Conner) is forced to watch helplessly as her mother is torched to death by a mysterious dark figure - for no apparent reason. This event leads us into an unpredictable narrative in which we are forced to ask who people are and what are their motivations? Interestingly, many of these questions are left unanswered - hidden behind a dry, dusty veil of secrecy.
As a result of the terrifying murder of her mother, Nikki grew up harboring a number of psychological problems, which seem to surface only when her conscious self is put to rest. That is, apart from her tendency to hate men, the frustrations and fears that Nikki carried with her for so many years were subdued by her hard-edged heroine facade in an attempt to regain some semblance of normality in her turbulent life. She had, however, involved herself in crime, most notably by seducing wealthy married men before drugging and robbing them as part of a 'Bonnie and Clyde'-type partnership that she had formed with her lover, Al (Matt Day).
The pair are forced to flee following one evening in which Nikki's victim dies, possibly as a result of a drug overdose. The two, fixed in their ways, take the man's possessions; among them a videotape showing paedophiliac activities that involve a national football star, Zipper Doyle (Barry Langrishe). A chase ensues in which Al and Nikki attempt to outrun and out-smart a pair of witty, spoofed cops and Doyle who is determined to reach the two before the police do.
