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 movies ambitious young men a-kiss-before-dying-1991


In movies, ambitious young men are almost always dangerous.


They are hungry, brooding, and dreaming, and nothing can stand in their way. They're a well-known sort, almost always accomplished by exaggeration: When asked to portray disappointment, hurt, and ambition all at the same time, the average actor goes overboard. Matt Dillon's ability to make his character self-contained, impassive, and all all the more dangerous is one of James Dearden's strengths in "a a kiss-before-dying."

Dillon portrays Jonathan, a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks who used to sit in his room as a teenager, morosely staring at the countless freight trains rumbling by, all of them bearing the Carlsson Copper logo. Those trains will be mine one day, he evidently told himself. We then see him at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is dating Dorothy (Sean Young), one of two twin daughters of a proud millionaire, Thor Carlsson (Max von Sydow). The film then throws us a curveball, which I will not reveal, but do not read any further unless you want to know that Dorothy is discovered dead, apparently by suicide.

Ellen, Dorothy's twin, is also played by Sean Young, and she and Jonathan quickly fall in love. They both work with the same homeless rescue organisation, where they pick up street kids and provide them with therapy and a place to sleep. However, Jonathan does not see social work as a long-term profession, so he befriends the obstinate old man, goes fishing with him, agrees with everything he says, and is finally hired by the family business.


Ellen is in love, but she is fixated on the idea that her twin did not kill herself. If you know where to look, you'll find a plethora of clues: Dorothy, for example, was dressed in new shoes that she had bought just before her death. Is it a suicidal person's behaviour? And there are the unsolved suicides of Dorothy's former classmates and colleagues. Were they privy to anything? Are their deaths a coincidence? Veteran filmgoers, familiar with the Rule of Economy of Characters, will have guessed that Jonathan is not in the film simply to stand by while Ellen finds the real killer. "A Kiss Before Dying" generates most of its suspense, in fact, by allowing us to know things about Jonathan that Ellendoes not have any idea The director, Dearden, wrote "Fatal Attraction" and got a lot of mileage out of the same concept: a man is in mortal danger from the woman with whom he is having an affair. The audience in "Fatal Attraction" was not quite as sure of the truth, but the power of "A Kiss Before Dying" is that the Matt Dillon character is so intimate, so dominated by inner needs that no one else in the film is able to see, that he is almost two people, all by himself.


Matt Dillon's first film since "Drugstore Cowboy" proves once again that he is one of the finest actors working today. He knows the art of not offering so much, of not working so hard that his success becomes distracting. Dillon was never qualified as an actress and was cast in an underappreciated yet influential film called "Over the Edge" when he was a junior in high school. He has since proven to have a natural affinity for the camera. His career was threatened by his quasi-Teen Idol status for a fleeting time, but he continued acting, preferring exciting roles and strong directors, and today he and the slightly older Sean Penn are the best actors in their age group.