Its plot follows some of the conventions established in the film noir tradition with a dark plot and an innocent man who tries to redeem himself from his criminal past.

The movie is loosely based on the 1947 version of Kiss of Death.

This film keeps the older theme fresh by providing a detailed characterization of the protagonist as a flesh and blood man.

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Caruso’s character, Jimmy Kilmartin, is a family man who has matured beyond the criminal life he once knew. He wants to leave his past behind him and live a normal life with his wife and their baby daughter but his past will not let him go easily.

Family honor to his blood-cousin, Ronnie, a younger man seriously lacking morals, played well by Michael Rapaport, draws him back into his old occupation of stealing cars, chopping them up and re-selling them.

After he is apprehended, he finds himself in a battle of mighty opposites, the mob underworld and the New York Police Department both of them corrupt to a degree.

Caruso brings color to his character. He has proven himself a deft actor in past films (Mad Dog and Glory, An Officer and a Gentleman) and the hit TV series NYPD Blue. In Kiss of Death, he allows the audience to believe in the character’s trials and tribulations.

The chief bad guy, Little Junior, is a less believable character played as well as the script allows by Nicolas Cage. Little Junior is a physically threatening crime lord who cannot please his dying father.

In the past, Cage has played good serio-comic and romantic roles (Raising Arizona, It Could Happen to You), but in this film his character simply lacks the depth Cage seems to need to make him real. The blame for this shoddy character may lie with the script writer, Richard Price (Color of Money).

Samuel Jackson plays Calvin, a police officer who believes Kilmartin shot him, though in reality Kilmartin tried to stop the bullet, literally.

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His character is also a good man who is trying to believe that there is justice in the world even though everything around him points to the contrary.

Other characters include Kilmartin’s wife, played by Helen Hunt (Mad About You), and Omar, a mysterious underworld character in league with Little Jimmy, played by Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction)

Director Barbet Schroeder (Single White Female, Barfly) tries to bring some of the realism this genre of film demands.

He succeeds in places, like the brilliantly done fight scene at the end, but misses in others, such as the D.A.’s interrogation of Kilmartin.

Overall the movie holds together pretty well. Schroeder, with the help of a professional cast of actors, manages to make Kiss of Death a fairly interesting film in terms of character study and plot structure. III