Well, what an odd film. So far I have liked John Dahl's films, but this one left me distinctly cold. There's something oddly out-of-kilter about the whole exercise, not least the whimsical cod Italian music which plays in more or less every scene, which is intended, I suppose, to inform us that it's all a bit of a hoot really, to the ghastly schmaltz of the 'hero' finally hooking up with the 'heroine' and providing the, for some, de rigueur 'happy ending'. In the other of Dahl's films I've seen schmaltz was not just absent, but replaced by a black humour which was the icing on the cake. Perhaps it looked OK on paper when Dahl first looked at the script. Alcoholic hit-man who is getting sloppy because he's drinking to much is sent by his gangster 'family' to another city to dry out. While there is meets a quirky female - I assume we're supposed to think her quirky or kooky or something - and they fall in love. But the family back home is being extinguished by other gangster so our hero goes home for one last job to avenge the murder of his boss. Actually, it doesn't even sound that promising on paper. I suppose I must allow that in other hands some director might, just might, have made something off it, but inexplicably Dahl isn't that director. Given the overall lack of cohesion and, for this viewer at least, the fact that the film missed all its targets by a country mile, it would be silly to list individual shortcomings, but I'll do so anyway. For one that find actor, great in the right part, Ben Kingsley (or Sir Kingsley as Christopher kept calling him in The Sopranos) is thoroughly miscast. Then there's the character he plays, an unrepentant hit-man who doesn't feel guilty that he has murdered people, just that he was often so drunk he made a hash of many jobs and didn't kill then cleanly. That's funny? OK, again I've got to accede that in the right hands it might well be made to seem so, but Dahl's really aren't the right hands. This film will certainly please some folk - after all, a great many go for all those goddam-awful formulaic blockbusters. But it didn't please me and if you intend watching it because you have liked other of Dahl's films, give it a miss. He can do, and has done, a lot better than this. Yes, it has many of Dahl's hallmarks, not least, some good lines, but the parts really don't add up to a respectable whole. Sorry, but that's the truth.
Review of You Kill Me
