This is ostensibly a remake of an overly sentimental noir from 1947, justly celebrated not for Victor Mature's bumbling, anaemic hero but giggling Richard Widmark's psychotic gangster. Caruso, here making his lead debut after serving time in TV's NYPD Blue and sundry supports (look for his cop in Ferrara's King of New York), carries this with his flame-hair and paunch, but again it's the nemesis who lingers in the memory like blood on upholstery. Cage has grotesquely pumped his body here, wrapping it in muscle shirts and shell suits; a psycho equally at home beating on you or bench-pressing strippers to impress papa. Balls, Attitude, Direction. He's seldom been as good.

Inevitably more violent than its predecessor (unsparingly so on occasion), Richard Price's script and Schroeder's direction are noticeably trashier, more immoral than anything in the original. This is one of Price's best, darker and more rounded, far nastier than his irritatingly perfunctory work on Sea of Love or the lamentable Night And The City remake for De Niro. Like the recent Clockers (penned from his novel with director Spike Lee), this is meaty, often surprising stuff which avoids most of the obvious clichés (note the truncated kiddie-abduction near the end) only fumbling the ball in the final too-neat 10 minutes.

Still, for Schroeder this is a real change of pace, dirtier and far more satisfying than his recent flirtation with the glossed-up Hollywood thriller: the silly Single White Female, or the Oscar-heavy but rather anonymous Reversal of Fortune. This New York is full of oily puddles, derelict sites and garish nightclubs - all pink neon and silver palms - and is all the better for it. Don't believe anyone who tells you this is sub-Tarantino (Price is far from content with being simply a smart-ass), or just another gutter-bound potboiler. Kiss of Death might be a minor gem, but a gem is a gem nonetheless.