YOU KILL ME (2007)

This unusual – and as far as I’m aware, largely ignored – skewed variant on a crime-based movie, has no shortage of comparison points with the TV series The Sopranos. You Kill Me is more reflective, and less operatically pitched than The Sopranos, but like that series, it’s inherently ‘hi-concept’, but not so focussed on that that it fails to sketch in intriguing characterisations, nor to include some memorably off-kilter whimsical humour.

In The Sopranos the ‘hi-concept’ part the show was sold on was that an organised crime guy could also be the other type of family guy, with all the usual problems anyone might face, leading him to enter therapy with a psychologist.

In You Kill Me, Ben Kingsley plays Frank Falenczyk, a hitman for a Polish mob group of dwindling influence in his home town of Buffalo, NY, who, due to his extreme and regular abuse of alcohol, botches one job too many, and is sent by his uncle (Philip Baker Hall), the Polish mob’s leader, to dry out in San Francisco, under the supervision of a contact (Bill Pullman). The latter, who gives every impression of being a complete douche-bag, arranges regular work for Falenczyk, which turns out to be in the business, or ‘backstage’, area of a funeral home, and arranges for him to attend AA meetings.

Frank is the kind of closed-in guy who is about as likely to “open up and share” as the average school headmaster of the 1960s and 70s, so the AA meetings where everyone pours their guts out pretty much drive him nuts in the early going. Also this not drinking business has little immediate appeal for him.

However, he turns out to have something of a knack for his new work, dealing with another side of the death process than he’s used to, and in the course of his new duties meets a woman he’s interested in, Laurel Pearson (Tea Leoni) – the step-daughter of one of his ‘dear departed’ clients.

It’s when he starts to share a few more details (well, actually pretty much all of them) of what exactly he does for a living with her, and his AA sponsor (Luke Wilson), that the muted black humour of You Kill Me begins to take on a particularly surreal edge.

Director John Dahl (probably best known for the Matt Damon poker movie Rounders, but also somewhat known for his breakthrough picture Red Rock West) lays himself out a curious tightrope to tread here. As played by Kingsley, who is tremendous, the Frank Falenczyk character is realistic and likable, which is a tough sell for a professional killer. The main characters in the movie want him to succeed in defeating his alcoholism and regaining control of his personal and professional life. To an extent, the audience is also encouraged to want him to succeed in these areas. However, there’s that little business of him killing people.

The line Dahl has to walk is to get the viewer on-side, at least to some extent, with Frank and Laurel, while also acknowledging the bizarre and unpalatable (at least) qualities of what exactly his real line of work is.

Actually, within the seamless little world of small triumphs, failures and ironies comprising You Kill Me, he does about as good a job of reconciling this both dramatically, and for comic value, as possible. With a good whack of suspension of disbelief and a temporary suspension of ‘real world’ moral judgement, most viewers ought to be able to get there.

It’s a movie gifted with very solid support performances. Tea Leoni in the co-lead shows a great ability to create a sympathetic character from one not particularly overburdened with likeable traits. Her Laurel is dark-humoured, somewhat abrasive, and has clearly seen a certain amount of damage from previous relationships and life in general. (There’s a vague similarity to the character played by Lisa Kudrow, in her jaw-droppingly strong performance in The Opposite of Sex, but the Leoni character here isn’t quite THAT damaged, and You Kill Me isn’t emotionally quite as jagged.)

Dennis Farina is perfectly cast to exploit his inherent qualities on screen, in terms of affably loathsome smarminess, as the leader of Buffalo’s Irish crime family, which is intent on squeezing the last atoms of life out of the Polish mob’s influence. He might not look outstandingly Irish, but in a movie where Ben Kingsley is playing a Polish-American, presumably one makes certain allowances.

Pullman really gives his loudmouth real estate-broker/arsehole character a stink that lingers in what probably should have been a minor role in terms of screen-time, but resonates a bit beyond any per-line basis; and Luke Wilson has just the right combination of likeability, confusion and being just a bit ‘off’ as the AA sponsor. As usual he’s more engaging and more amusing than his brother Owen ever quite seems to manage.

You Kill Me is probably, on any further, deeper reflection, a slight movie, but it’s also about as engaging, flavoursome, and endearingly odd as one of those gets. Pretty much everything about it is well done, right down to Winnipeg, Manitoba doubling for the US in location shooting, and, perhaps most of all, the virtually unheard of running-time of 92 minutes for a modern movie, when that’s the length it actually needed to be.

About the only major thing I can fault it on is the title. It sounds like they were thinking of some caper-crime type Vegas wiseguy comedy movie with Danny DeVito and Bette Midler from a couple of decades ago. Apart from the word ‘Kill’ it conveys little of the content of this movie, and precisely nothing of the tone. Had they called it The Rootin’-Tootin’ Boozin’ Shootin’ Movie, they could have hardly have done it any less of a favour.

(8.5 out of 11, on the industry-standard MPHOAH scale)

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