David Klass, the screenwriter, gives Freeman and Judd more specific dialogue than is usual in thrillers; they sound as if they might actually be talking with each other and not simply advancing plot points.

It features a pair of well-developed characters, the plot contains some clever twists and turns, the dialogue is reasonable, and director Gary Fleder (Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead) keeps the level of tension and intrigue high. Put together, all of that adds up to a worthwhile motion picture.

Fleder has directed three-quarters of a terrific movie and one-quarter of pure Hollywood baloney. After carefully building up the suspense and tension through Cross and McTiernan's search, spiked with nail-biting encounters on both coasts, Fleder lets it trail off in anti-climax and banal violence.

A solid second film from director Gary Fleder ("Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead"), it's sure to set pulses racing and spines tingling. Too bad it's at the expense of the dignity of young women everywhere.

Replete with smart, capable characters and crimes so bizarre that they lend the film a suspiciously lurid nature, this tony suspenser is hampered by the presence of a villain who is all too obvious from the very beginning.

The movie -- adapted from James Patterson's novel by David Klass -- operates on the crime-movie equivalent of automatic pilot. It takes off, flies and lands without much creative intervention.

Kiss the Girls is a fake psychological thriller that turns into a garishly schlocky and implausible bogeyman hunt.

Fleder delivers the requisite shocks, and his direction is brisk, efficient and occasionally stylish; Judd and Freeman both give more than the material demands.

Sensitive acting by Morgan Freeman and stylish directing by Gary Fleder can't overcome the bottom-line pointlessness of the movie's melodramatic material, which never achieves the dark resonance that helped "The Silence of the Lambs" get under the skin of many moviegoers.

For Morgan Freeman ("Seven") fans, it's a chance to see a great actor save a movie from itself.

Director Gary Fleder seems to be trying for the mood and atmosphere of "Seven," another Freeman film about murder and police work, but this movie isn't as stylish and the script by David Klass, based on the James Patterson novel, doesn't really hang together.

Mr. Freeman projects a kindness, patience and canny intelligence that cut against the movie's fast pace and pumped-up shock effects. His performance is so measured it makes you want to believe in the movie much more than its gimmicky jerry-built plot ever permits.

It's diverting enough, and intermittently suspenseful, but also strangely empty and decadent in a way that truly merits that overused term.

Freeman and Judd are fine, as could be expected, but their pairing deserves a better movie -- not one with a cheap twist ending that will easily be spotted by anyone who's studied the complex machinations of any episode of Murder, She Wrote.