Kiss of Death

In fairness I thought they assembled a reasonable cast and it was interesting to see Danny Dyer as something other than a cockney geezer although quite why he had to have a shoulder holster on at all times was a bit bemusing. I think I preferred him in the underrated Severance.

I was disappointed when I saw it but in hindsight, at least something different was tried. The format was part-Memento/part-Rashomon with the jumpy narrative and POV approach.

Everyone seemed to shout at each other, past relationships/loyalties/enmities were hinted at but not with any great flair.

We all knew where it was going at the end (so long Jude, thanks for playing) but given the graphic nature of everything that had gone before, this didn't seem like a formula that would leave anything to the imagination. Instead we are left with a brief blurred image of the killer, presumably as he strangles Jude or whatever. This spur of the moment kill jarred with all his careful planning beforehand.

I always remember the Michael Mann movie, Manhunter with CSI's William Petersen. The opening with the killer's POV is really chilling, as is Petersen's monotone note taking at the crime scene - something along the lines of "Arterial spray on the wall. He tried to follow the killer, he was heading for the children's rooms." That stayed with me for days. Seeing Danny Dyer stabbing a blood filled dummy in the lab to replicate the kill looked more like a stag do activity.

It was a good try at doing something different and it could have been handled better but it was no Waking the Dead.

What sort of music did the film have? Could it really have been composed by The Prodigy, as the IMDb tells us?

I've just finished watching it on iPlayer. Yes it was terrible, what an awful script! But I can't agree that Louise Lombard was the only good thing about it... because she was woeful too. She may not have had any decent lines, and maybe she was under direction to shout and appear urgent, rushed and pressured throughout, but still I'd have expected more CSI-inspired acting than that of House of Elliot.

The US/UK mix of styles didn't come off at all. While trying to make it all more urgent and sexy US-style, it just came across as 2D and shouty. Also, too much emphasis was put on the back stories, so there wasn't enough time to flesh out their current character, hence why the profiler was even less than 2D.

The POV thing didn't work at all, just an excuse to repeat from a different camera angle rather than personal angle. Memento style? Not really, just a bit of fiddling with the timeline for the sake of it - more flashback than anything.

There were a couple of comments about it maybe being a little hard to follow and that was why it was being panned... well I certainly didn't find it difficult to follow at any point, it was simply poor TV.

...and just why were they using the Enterprise's Holodeck as a command centre?