the Jupiter Project

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – Danny Yount

A more state-of-the-art digital take on the cool old caper/spy titles of yore, nonetheless still effective and suitably noir. Clever flourishes abound, tightly connected to the jazzy score. I really like the brief sequence panning past silhouetted freeway ramps – it says Los Angeles even more than the California-Mod house at the beginning.

Despite the fact that it’s based on an ancient Brett Halliday pulper – and he’s one of my favourite grade-C hardboiled scribes – the film doesn’t live up to the fun promised in the title sequence. It’s just another tepid effort at reviving a dead genre, filmed entirely in that wearisome modern style of greys and blues and toilet stall greens. I think that whenever these 26-year old directors get the urge to start tinting and desaturizing everything they should just go back and watch something in black and white. Maybe one of these days it’ll give them an idea.