The first installment of

a planned spy franchise centered around gay former government agent Jacob

Keane, Kiss Me Deadly gets about half

of it right. Fortunately for a gay audience hungry for entertainment that

reflects the complexities of their lives, the parts that are right are the ways

in which the film integrates the sexuality of its protagonist (played by

chiseled-from-limestone out actor Robert Gant) into the spy genre.

But unfortunately for

fans of secret agent thrillers and mysteries, the parts that it gets wrong are

… well, pretty much everything else.

The story begins on the

eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall, as Keane and his partners Marta (Shannen

Doherty, in a colossally unfortunate wig) and Jared (Fraser Brown) are

attempting to either get a man out of the country or learn something important from

him. We’re not sure which, as before either assignment is completed there’s an

explosion and Marta is sent flying, with the mystery man lost in the flames.

A few days later Keane

and his crew learn that the Cold War has ended and that their jobs as

operatives are therefore pretty much dunzo. The fact that this information is

imparted to them by John Rhys-Davies from Raiders

of the Lost Ark does little to numb the blow.

We fast-forward to the

present via a montage of major political events moving through Bush, Clinton,

another Bush, the World

Trade Center

attacks and the attacks on the Pentagon. But don’t get your hopes up that the

film is going to have much to say about current events or shifting political

regimes, because it doesn’t. As Miss Scarlet simply put it, “Communism is just

a red herring.”

By this point, Jacob has

retired from his operative-gig and is now living a comfortable life in Milan as a photographer

specializing in rather tacky underwear campaigns. He kisses his assistant and

has two of the male models pose together, so we realize rather quickly that

Jacob is gay. We also learn that he has a child with a smokin’-hot lesbian

mother.

But Jacob’s

underwear-swathed Italian idyll is about to be shattered by the reappearance of

Marta, who leaves an urgent message on his answering machine that she is coming

to Milan and must see him. He drops the kid off at the smokin’ lesbian’s house

(much to her chagrin, as she was in the middle of a round of “how’s-your-madre”

with her lover) and heads to the train station to meet Marta.

When he gets there he

learns that she has amnesia (she doesn’t even know who he is and doesn’t

remember calling him) and is being pursued by an evil thug. How do we know he’s

evil? He frosts his hair. Always a dead

giveaway.

From here on the movie is

all about learning why Marta can’t remember anything and figuring out what

Frosty the Hitman and his disarmingly attractive thug henchman (played by gay

retired rugby player Ian Roberts) are after. Jacob has some pieces of the

puzzle and must reconnect with his old agency after 20 years of retirement.

As he does so, he begins

to wonder if they may be in on the scheme. He’s also not telling Marta

everything he knows, which leads the forgetful femme fatale to become

suspicious of him … especially when she regains memories of sleeping with the

dashing (if dour) former spy.

After Jacob kisses his

lover goodbye and hits the road with Marta, the action moves to St. Albans,

then to London, Zurich,

and finally back again to Milan,

keeping up a pace brisk enough to make the casual viewer lose track of various

dropped story threads and overlook some gaping holes in the plot.

Along the way there’s

some skin (though most of it unfortunately doesn’t belong to either Gant or Roberts)

and here!’s now-trademark gratuitous full-frontal male nudity which is frequently more distracting than anything else thanks to the liberties that the

narrative takes in order to fit in the pickle shots.

For example: At one

point, Jacob realizes that his cell phone is being traced, and in order to get

rid of it in a crowded bar he seduces a young Italian man in the bathroom,

promising to meet him at a sex club as he slyly slips the phone into the guy’s

pocket.

After Jacob and Marta

blow town, we spend a little time with this nameless schmoe at the sex club,

which allows us to get more of an eyeful of the guy than any of the Bond girls

ever gave up. But of course, Frosty the Hitman tracks down the guy via Jacob’s

cell phone, and kills him. Hey, Jake … you might not have wanted to sleep with

the guy, but you didn’t necessarily have to deliver him to an untimely death in

a gay bathhouse.

En route to the truth,

Jacob and Marta unearth some uncomfortable secrets (including a few about their

own relationship) and rather stupidly get a few more innocent people killed.

It’s kind of funny that these people were supposed to have been super

operatives, because they’re certainly not very good at deducing the glaringly

obvious solution to their situation.

Still, the story moves

along quickly, which in some cases might be enough to carry a tepid thriller

over the finish line. But Kiss Me Deadly

is simply too lacking in too many other departments to rate.

The action is uneven, and

a few of the scenes are so badly shot and edited that they’re downright

hilarious (there’s a “car chase” where neither vehicle looks like it’s going

over 15 miles per hour and a “car crash” where the vehicle suddenly flips over

… off-screen!).

The climactic fist-fight

between Jacob and the beefy goon is the most satisfying action of the film, and

not just because of the added joy of knowing that these are two strapping gay

men wrestling one another to the ground.

The performances are

likewise too unremarkable to save the movie from feeling like a Lifetime

betrayal drama with a few explosions thrown in. Gant seems invested but just

isn’t much fun to watch, and the same goes for Doherty.

The movie is almost

completely humorless (at least that is intentional) and the characters don’t

have much electricity either alone or with one another. You get the feeling

they’d behave the same way at their accountant’s office as they do trying to

solve the life-or-death mystery confronting them.

There are a few clever

twists and unexpected shocks that keep things from getting too dour, and this

might be enough to satisfy some viewers looking for a way to wile away a Sunday

afternoon.

If the lead character

didn’t happen to be gay, Kiss Me Deadly

would be a fairly rote made-for-TV cheapie, and while its unapologetic gay hero

might be enough to make it something of a cultural curiosity, it’s not enough

to excuse some of the movie’s other shortcomings.

If here! really are

planning a series, they’d better seriously amp up the action and excitement,

because without the novelty factor, this spy thriller would have very little to

offer. Let’s hope Jacob’s next assignment is one more worth coming out of

retirement for.

Kiss Me Deadly is currently available on demand at here!'s website.