Movie review: ‘You Kill Me’

FloridaGator80
A promotional still photograph from the movie “You Kill Me.”

I avoided doing reviews of dark, depressing drama when I began my daily blog. However, with this being my 208th review (click here for a link to all of them), I’ve reached the point that I’m confident enough to work with some of the more dramatic, dark films that I’ve watched. So, today I’m looking at a little-remembered film called “You Kill Me” that didn’t do well at the box office despite offering a stellar effort from just about everyone on screen. The depressing nature of “You Kill Me” might have something to do with it, but you cannot go wrong if you want to see tremendous acting. Check it out, but if you are easily disturbed by bodies (but only when the hitman’s working at a funeral home) or don’t want to be dragged through a dark passage by most characters, then don’t bother because this one can be disturbing.

‘You Kill Me’
(2007; 93 minutes; rated R; directed by John Dahl and starring Ben Kingsley, Téa Leoni and Luke Wilson)

REDEMPTION AND AN ALCOHOLIC HITMAN

(NOTE: I expanded this review with additional opinion, some more trivia and the updating of some links on Feb. 28, 2016. I again expanded the review on July 16, 2021. I again expanded the review on April 6, 2025.)

You’ll find a very few laughs in “You Kill Me” and they’re low-key and more subtle than something like a Robin Williams monologue. It’s because while “You Kill Me” tries to be a bit quirky with its plot twists, it is at its heart a dark drama that deals with the degradation of the human spirit. Of course, there’s redemption … but it’s somewhat hollow at the end after all the damaged souls that have passed on screen.

Still, director John Dahl, who was responsible for the terrific poker movie “Rounders” with Matt Damon (click here to read my review), and actors Ben Kingsley and Téa Leoni – with nice kick-ins by Luke Wilson and Bill Pullman – make this film an actor’s film. It’s not flashy or over-adventurous. It is completely character and dialogue driven (although seeing Kingsley standing in a politician’s office in his underwear before threatening him with handgun is humorous).

A promotional still photograph from the movie “You Kill Me.”

In “You Kill Me,” Kingsley has been the best hitman for a mob in Buffalo in upstate New York. However, he’s turned into a barely functioning alcoholic (he sweeps snow from his front stoop by swigging from a vodka bottle and tossing it to another step and then cleaning down far enough for another shot). After botching a hit, Kingsley gets sent by the boss to dry out in San Francisco, where he becomes involved in Alcoholics Anonymous and is given a job at a funeral home.

Kingsley, who plays “Frank Falenczyk,” meets Leoni, who plays “Laurel Pearson,” and both are lonely and in search of companionship, each in their individual way. Through the middle part of the film Kingsley gets involved with AA and begins working on his sobriety, especially after falling off the wagon at an Irish funeral (stereotype alert!). His life is also affected by his “AA sponsor,” Luke Wilson playing “Tom,” as well as the mob’s connection in San Francisco – Pullman, who plays shady real estate man “Dave.”

A promotional still photograph from the movie “You Kill Me.”

One of the low-key humorous scenes is where Kingsley, while telling his life story at a meeting, confesses multiple murders and to being a hired killer to a room full of AA members. As they walk away from the meeting, Wilson asks Kingsley if he should have done that, Kingsley replies, “It’s Alcoholics Anonymous.” Wilson retorts, “Somehow I don’t really feel that’s what they had in mind when they came up with the name, but you never know.” Just like Kingsley making amends to people he has harmed by sending gift cards to the families of his victims, I’m not sure how the AA organization would evaluate this form of cinematic examination, but I doubt that they support it in any way.

In any case, Kingsley, who by now has become enamored of Leoni and the two form a relationship, is forced to head back to Buffalo to help settle a gang dispute in the way he knows best. However, now he has a helper – Leoni. It all turns out well for everyone (except the rival gang boss and most of Kingsley’s mob friends in Buffalo).

Here’s a look at some of the principal cast:

  • A promotional still photograph from the movie “You Kill Me.”

    An Oscar winner and three-time nominee and two-time Golden Globe winner and six-time nominee (not for this one), Kingsley is simply perfectly cast in this role and delivers a near-perfect performance. He’s the right age (late middle age) for both his character’s history as a killer and an alcoholic as well as playing off the romance with a younger woman (in real life, he is just over 22 years older than Leoni). Kinglsey gets so absorbed in this character that it just screams out from the screen. Kingsley won his Oscar and two Globes for for his epic portrayal in the title role of “Gandhi” and Oscar nominations include “Bugsy” and “Sexy Beast.” I enjoyed his work in “Sneakers” with Robert Redford (click here to read my review) as well as “Schindler’s List” and “Dave” (click here to read my review). Kingsley also nominated for four Primetime Emmy awards, including for the tee-vee movie “Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story.”

  • A promotional still photograph from the movie “You Kill Me.”

    Leoni is at her dramatic best in this one. She’s just enough off-handedly distracted at first and grows in the relationship with Kingsley to reveal her true talent. She never overwhelms any scene, but, in each one she’s in, it would have been something less without her. Leoni has been in a variety of types of films from “Jurassic Park III” (click here to read my review) to the bland remake of “Fun With Dick and Jane” with Jim Carrey to her excellent work in the Christmas season-themed film “The Family Man” with Nicolas Cage (click here to read my review). She was also in the simply awful “Tower Heist” (click here to read my review).

  • From the movie “You Kill Me.”

    Wilson is appropriately smooth here as Kingsley’s AA sponsor. Just like all the actors, he’s playing a bit low-key here and does a good job of conveying his character’s non-judgmental attitude towards Kingsley’s flaws (even when he finds out that Kingsley is a killer – in a neat scene at Wilson’s job as a toll attendant). Wilson has also been in “Old School” and “Legally Blonde” as well as the little-known film early in his career called “Bongwater.”

  • Pullman is suitably creepy as the guy keeping an eye on Kingsley for the mob. He’s in shady deals and makes odd comments while often forgetting the deadly nature of Kingsley’s background. Pullman appears as if he’s having a good time with the weird character and you’ll enjoy him, too. Pullman isn’t as over-the-top here as he was in his first film, “Ruthless People” (click here to read my review) and he’s also been in “Independence Day” and was wonderfully low-key (but in a very positive way) in “While You Were Sleeping” with Sandra Bullock (click here to read my review).
  • Marcus Thomas plays “Stef Krzeminski” and is the boss’ son and Kingsley’s friend. Thomas does a really nice job with his character, which is shown balancing between helping his wife pick out clothes while shopping to the criminal side of his job. Thomas was also in “Drowning Mona,” but the native of Belgium has a slim CV of just 16 acting credits including “Bigger than the Sky” and his last from 2021: “The Ice Road.”

Two veteran supporting actors play gang bosses here: Philip Baker Hall plays “Roman Krzeminski” and Dennis Farina plays “Edward O’Leary.” Hall is Kingsley’s boss and friend while Farina is the deadly opposition.

  • A promotional still photograph from the movie “You Kill Me.”

    Hall does a straightforward job as the mobster who is Kingsley’s boss and he’s volatile but supportive of Kingsley getting sober, even when it hurts in his battle against Farina. However, Hall doesn’t manage to elevate his character in any way close to Kingsley’s and Leoni’s efforts. Hall had a prolific career by notching 183 acting credits spanning six decades from the first in 1970 to the last in 2020. Hall was comfortable on the big screen with “Magnolia” and “Boogie Nights” to TV characters in episodes on shows such as “Monk,” in which he played a crime boss. He died of emphysema at 90 in 2022.

  • A promotional still photograph from the movie “You Kill Me.”

    Farina has a great showdown with Kingsley and you’ve already guessed the outcome of this one. It isn’t a huge part, but Farina does his usual superior job as a criminal. He was just as good as the cruel, vengeful mob boss in “Midnight Run” with Robert De Niro (click here to read my review) and was in “Saving Private Ryan” (click here to read my non-review) as well as being an FBI agent in “Manhunter” (click here to read my review), the film that introduced “ Hannibal ‘The Cannibal’ Lecter” to audiences. Actually, I like his work best in the underrated comedy “Big Trouble” with Tim Allen (click here to read my review). Farina died at 69 in 2013 of a pulmonary embolism.

All in all, “You Kill Me” has exceptional work by a wonderful supporting cast. However, it is very, very dark with some disturbing scenes not meant for all audiences.

I have to say I’m puzzled about the box office performance of “You Kill Me.” It had an anemic total of $2.4 million for 209th place at theaters, according to Box Office Mojo. This number almost makes me believe that it was initially released on cable. It was first released at the noted Tribeca Film Festival in April 2007 and then again at another festival two months later. IMDb.com notes that it then went into limited release in the U.S. And then that’s that.

The No. 1 film of the year in 2007 was “Spider-Man 3” with $336.5 million. Here are the films from that year that I have reviewed:

Assorted cast and film notes (via IMDb.com):

  • Kingsley’s birth name is Krishna Bhanji; Leoni’s birth name is Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni; and Wilson’s middle name is Cunningham.
  • Of the film’s 24 days of filming on “You Kill Me,” only one was spent in San Francisco. The rest were in Winnipeg in Canada.
  • Directly from IMDb.com: “The movie mixes real San Francisco locations, such as Alamo Square Park and Golden Gate Bridge (where Luke Wilson works at the toll booth) with fakes such as a non-existent Saint Margaret’s Church on Geary and 28th Avenue (actually in Winnipeg, Manitoba).”
  • The most un-Hollywood name for an actor here is Sandy Jobin-Bevans. He plays “Supervisor Davis,” who is the bureaucrat that Kingsley threatens in his underwear over a real estate dispute with Pullman. Jobin-Bevans was also in “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” (click here to read my review) and “Dawn of the Dead.”
  • Finally and directly from IMDb.com: “The intersection shown at the end is the same intersection shown at the end of The Pursuit of Happyness (2006).”

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