Thursday 16 June 2016

DRESSED TO KILL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - De Palma Masterpiece June 17, 2016 at TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX in major series entitled: Split/Screen: The Cinema of Brian De Palma


Dressed To Kill (1980)
Dir. Brian De Palma
Starring: Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen,
Keith Gordon, Dennis Franz, David Margulies, William Finley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If Dressed To Kill was merely a tartly effective thriller, it might have been enough to solidify its place in film history, but the fact that it goes so much further is what keeps it to the forefront, where all great cinema deserves to be.

The fact of the matter is that cruelty is the driving engine of the film - not just cruelty for cruelty's sake, but to expose our own need to wallow in richly delineated sadism, especially as it's perpetrated upon others (those characters in the film who are all examples of lives that have "become unnecessary" - lives, perhaps, not unlike those belonging to most all of miserable humanity).

READ GREG KLYMKIW'S FULL REVIEW OF BRIAN DE PALMA'S DRESSED TO KILL HERE