You Kill Me is a nice film that could have been better if it hadn't gotten so caught up in its own premise.
Frank (Ben Kingsley) is hit-man and primary muscle for a Polish crime family in Buffalo. I've never really heard of the Polish Mafia before, but apparently they've got it in Buffalo. Frank is also a drunk and when he drinks too much he passes out, missing his chance to kill the head of a rival Irish crime family (all criminals seem to be ethnic in Buffalo), the head of the Polish mob, Frank's uncle, sends his alcoholic nephew to San Francisco to dry himself out. Out on the Left Coast, Frank gets a job preparing the bodies for showing at a funeral home, starts going to AA meetings and meets a really tough chick named Laurel (Tea Leoni). But as Frank tries to stop drinking so he can get back to killing, his crime family back home gets more and more squeezed by its enemies. Though Frank wants to see what he can make of life with Laurel, he's drawn back to Buffalo to make one final stand.
I would guess that synopsis doesn't sound like a particularly funny movie, but You Kill Me is fairly amusing. Kingsley creates in Frank a none-too-bright, emotionally unaware "fish out of water", whether he's in an AA meeting or nervously asking Laurel out on a date. Frank also has an utter lack of hypocrisy about what he does for a living and why he does it. The story does ask you to accept that no one cares or gets upset when Frank tells them he kills people. I know that San Francisco is supposed to be all tolerant and stuff, but you would think that the folks out there would recoil just a bit from someone who performs murder-for-hire.
Tea Leoni is also quite nice as a woman who's smarter and in some ways tougher than her professional killer boyfriend. But the movie never does enough with Laurel and that's related to its main weakness. T he idea of a hit-man being sent out to San Francisco to stop drinking and "get in touch with himself" is pretty neat, but the story gets trapped in that concept. Once Frank gets out there, you become interested in him and in Laurel and in the other people he meets out there, like his gay AA sponsor Tom (Luke Wilson). There's a funny and charming dynamic that develops but gets cut off as the movie keeps going back to the state of Frank's crime family in Buffalo. To the audience, though, there's no real reason to care about what happens to the Polish mob or bother with why they're better than the Irish mob or the Greek mob or the Chinese mob.
One of the tricks of writing is learning to recognize that you may intend a story to go in one direction but once you start, the story may want to unfold in a completely different way. You Kill Me wanted to stay in San Francisco and say more about this world and these people Frank found himself with. For example, what burned Laurel so badly in life that a short, bald, middle aged assassin looks like great relationship material to her because at least he's honest? But these filmmakers weren't paying enough attention to their own film to see that.
You Kill Me is mildly entertaining, mostly for the good work of Kingsley and Leoni, but it's one of those movies that you can tell could have been a lot better.
Frank (Ben Kingsley) is hit-man and primary muscle for a Polish crime family in Buffalo. I've never really heard of the Polish Mafia before, but apparently they've got it in Buffalo. Frank is also a drunk and when he drinks too much he passes out, missing his chance to kill the head of a rival Irish crime family (all criminals seem to be ethnic in Buffalo), the head of the Polish mob, Frank's uncle, sends his alcoholic nephew to San Francisco to dry himself out. Out on the Left Coast, Frank gets a job preparing the bodies for showing at a funeral home, starts going to AA meetings and meets a really tough chick named Laurel (Tea Leoni). But as Frank tries to stop drinking so he can get back to killing, his crime family back home gets more and more squeezed by its enemies. Though Frank wants to see what he can make of life with Laurel, he's drawn back to Buffalo to make one final stand.
I would guess that synopsis doesn't sound like a particularly funny movie, but You Kill Me is fairly amusing. Kingsley creates in Frank a none-too-bright, emotionally unaware "fish out of water", whether he's in an AA meeting or nervously asking Laurel out on a date. Frank also has an utter lack of hypocrisy about what he does for a living and why he does it. The story does ask you to accept that no one cares or gets upset when Frank tells them he kills people. I know that San Francisco is supposed to be all tolerant and stuff, but you would think that the folks out there would recoil just a bit from someone who performs murder-for-hire.
Tea Leoni is also quite nice as a woman who's smarter and in some ways tougher than her professional killer boyfriend. But the movie never does enough with Laurel and that's related to its main weakness. T he idea of a hit-man being sent out to San Francisco to stop drinking and "get in touch with himself" is pretty neat, but the story gets trapped in that concept. Once Frank gets out there, you become interested in him and in Laurel and in the other people he meets out there, like his gay AA sponsor Tom (Luke Wilson). There's a funny and charming dynamic that develops but gets cut off as the movie keeps going back to the state of Frank's crime family in Buffalo. To the audience, though, there's no real reason to care about what happens to the Polish mob or bother with why they're better than the Irish mob or the Greek mob or the Chinese mob.
One of the tricks of writing is learning to recognize that you may intend a story to go in one direction but once you start, the story may want to unfold in a completely different way. You Kill Me wanted to stay in San Francisco and say more about this world and these people Frank found himself with. For example, what burned Laurel so badly in life that a short, bald, middle aged assassin looks like great relationship material to her because at least he's honest? But these filmmakers weren't paying enough attention to their own film to see that.
You Kill Me is mildly entertaining, mostly for the good work of Kingsley and Leoni, but it's one of those movies that you can tell could have been a lot better.