WHEN a movie begins with narration from beyond the grave, you know you’re in for a hard-boiled story.

It’s a technique that’s used rarely, but famously – William Holden in “Sunset Boulevard,” Edmond O’Brien in “DOA,” Joe Pesci in “Casino.”

Now it’s John Stamos in a Lifetime TV movie, “The Two Mr. Kissels,” representing the first time you’ve likely heard his name juxtaposed with William Holden’s or Joe Pesci’s.

Hey, why not? Stamos does a great job in this made-for-TV movie (which he also produced) as Andrew Kissel, one of two Kissel brothers who died violently in unrelated murders.

Andrew, the older one, was the high-living real estate developer who accumulated his wealth through a series of fraudulent schemes – among them, embezzling $4 million from the co-op building in which he lived at East 74th Street and Third Avenue.

In April 2006, he was found dead in his Greenwich, Conn., mansion, bound to a chair and bloodied from 27 stab wounds. He was 46.

Younger brother Robert (played by Anson Mount), an executive for American investment companies in Hong Kong, died there in November 2003. His adulterous wife, Nancy (Robin Tunney of “The Mentalist“), was convicted of murdering him by lacing a strawberry milkshake with a date-rape drug and then bludgeoning him to death with a small statue as he lay unconscious on the floor of their bedroom .

She’s serving a life sentence in a Chinese prison. Meanwhile, Andrew Kissel’s chauffeur and the chauffeur’s cousin are awaiting trial for his murder.

Unsurprisingly, the lesson here is that crime doesn’t pay. It’s a lesson you’ll learn from the film’s telling of the Andrew Kissel story, long before the murders are committed.

In the movie, Kissel is a hard-partying cokehead juggling his wife (Gretchen Egolf) and out-of-town girlfriends, as well as various shell companies and multiple bank accounts all set up to create confusion about his assets as he went about robbing money from friends, neighbors and investors who trusted him.

Watching this guy live this out-of-control life will have you vowing never to become a criminal – it’s too stressful!

Movies based on true crime stories, such as “The Two Mr. Kissels,” have been produced for TV for years. The good news here is: This one, with its luxurious locations and unflinching violence (culminating in Nancy’s pulp fiction-like murder of her husband) represents a new high standard that will be difficult for other movies of its kind to beat.

“The Two Mr. Kissels” Tonight at 9 on Lifetime