

The young woman brings it on herself by becoming pregnant, or so Jonathan reasons. He's so seriously motivated, in fact, that in an early sequence in "A Kiss Before Dying," he doesn't hesitate to throw his fiancee down an airwell in the Philadelphia City Hall.

Jonathan, an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, comes across as handsome, sincere, modest and, above all, seriously motivated. "A Kiss Before Dying," written and directed by James Dearden, who wrote "Fatal Attraction," is the entertaining if bent, almost-success story of Jonathan Corliss (Matt Dillon), a poor young man who wants to get ahead.
