In typical noir fashion, Killer\u2019s Kiss<\/em> opens with hard-boiled narration from protagonist Davey Gordon (Jamie Smith), a once-promising boxer whose latest in-ring loss has effectively ended his career. Davey is standing in Penn Station, reflecting back on where everything went wrong for him. As usual, there\u2019s a dame involved, but Davey\u2019s neighbor Gloria Price (Irene Kane) isn\u2019t a manipulative seductress \u2014 she\u2019s a scared young woman who\u2019s just as emotionally vulnerable as Davey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just three days earlier, Davey and Gloria are simply solitary figures passing each other by. Kubrick cross-cuts between them as they descend the stairs on opposite sides of their apartment building, Davey headed to his doomed fight, Gloria headed to the taxi-dance hall where she works. It seems like they\u2019re building inexorably to a momentous meeting, but they merely nod at each other in the courtyard before going their separate ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Gloria is always lurking in the background of Davey\u2019s life, often literally. Her window faces his, and the movie\u2019s first glimpse of her is almost subliminal, as she goes about her business while the camera focuses on Davey in the foreground. Later, after Davey has lost his fight, he sits alone in the dark brooding over his failure, then receives a call from his uncle, inviting him to return home to the family farm outside Seattle. As Davey demurs on the request, the only source of light comes from Gloria\u2019s apartment across the way, reflected in the mirror behind Davey\u2019s head. He watches her undress, seeing a beacon of hope in his bleak world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That multilayered shot composition is a hallmark of later Kubrick films, and he uses it elegantly in Killer\u2019s Kiss<\/em>, on which he also serves as cinematographer and editor. As the angst-ridden Davey walks the streets of New York City, past the lights of Times Square into rundown warehouse districts, he resembles another Kubrick protagonist, decades later, wandering through a meticulously reconstructed version of New York City rather than the real thing. Davey never encounters the kind of all-powerful secret society that Tom Cruise\u2019s Dr. William Harford infiltrates in Eyes Wide Shut<\/em><\/a>, but he\u2019s also an insecure man whose masculinity has been threatened, grabbing onto anything that can affirm his fragile sense of self. Call it Eyes Wide Punched<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That desperation means that Davey tells Gloria \u201cI love you\u201d the day after their first direct interaction, and it means that he takes on the man who\u2019s destroying her life, dance-hall owner Vinnie Rapallo (Frank Silvera). Vinnie wants Gloria all to himself, and when she refuses, letting out a piercing scream as he tightens his grip on her arm, Davey comes rushing over from the other side of the building. He\u2019s woken from a nightmare not by his own screams, but by Gloria\u2019s, marking her as the key to his salvation. He\u2019s her salvation, too, offering her a lifeline away from the abusive gangster who took advantage of her at her lowest point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kubrick turns Gloria\u2019s story of that low point into an impressionistic dance piece starring his then-wife, Ruth Sobotka, as Gloria\u2019s ballet-dancer sister Iris. A traditional noir might present some heightened dramatization of Gloria\u2019s tragic home life, but Kubrick instead sticks with Iris, dancing solo on a darkened stage in an empty auditorium, as Gloria talks about the hardships she and her family endured. It\u2019s the movie\u2019s most notable departure from the noir formula, as Kubrick deliberately denies his audience the expected melodrama, giving them the haunted beauty of Gloria\u2019s late, troubled sister instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s nothing else quite that experimental in Killer\u2019s Kiss<\/em>, which mostly returns to the business of Davey and Gloria trying to escape Vinnie and his goons. The final confrontation between Davey and Vinnie takes place in a warehouse full of female mannequins, like abstracted versions of Gloria surrounding the men who are fighting over her. The action goes on a little too long, as both Davey and Vinnie revert to primal versions of themselves, Davey drawing on that visceral masculine energy that was always out of reach for William Harford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI guess the whole thing was pretty silly,\u201d Davey says in his closing narration, as the story circles back to where it started. Kubrick\u2019s foray into stock noir could have been silly, especially given the rushed resolution that follows Davey\u2019s final words. Before that moment, though, Kubrick makes Killer\u2019s Kiss<\/em> a striking, ambitious harbinger of even greater things to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Killer’s Kiss” is streaming on Kanopy<\/a> and Hoopla<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/killers-kiss-still-1024x576.jpg\")
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