Sadly Over-hyped

One of my all time favorites.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

***SPOILERS**** Always drunk and nipping on a bottle of vodka hit-man for the local Buffalo Polish mob-The Cosa Polska-Frank Falenczyk, Ben Kingsley, is ordered by his boss Roman Krezminski, Phillip Baker Hall,to go west young man to far off San Francisco and dry out with Polish mob controlled real-estate agent Dave, Bill Pullman, getting him a place to stay as well as a job as an assistant undertaker for at a local funeral home. Besides that he's forced to attend AA meetings to get him straightened out an off the booze so he can stay awake and shoot straight on his next assignment by Roman. That's to knock off his rival in crime local Buffalo Irish mob boss Edward O'Leary played by Italian/American actor, and ex Chicago cop, Dennis Farina. It's O'Leary who together with the help of the New York Chinese mobsters who is planning to take over Roman's mob operations in Buffalo.It's at the Doris Rainford, Alison Sealy-Smith, funeral parlor that Frank meets Laurel Pearson, Tea Leoni, who's there to have her dead step father readied for burial and Laurel not only turns out to be Frank's cup of tea, replacing all the booze that he's been drinking, but fall in love with her who's young enough to be his daughter. Juggling his affair with Laurel and staying off the sauce Frank starts to reevaluated his life and realizes that his job of killing people isn't as rewarding as he at first thought it was. Also his attempt to stop drinking doesn't go so well with him getting smashed at a party and ending up smashing one of the party goers car.***SPOILERS**** It's when Frank gets the news that his boss Roman was knocked off back in Buffalo by the O'Leary gang he decides to take just one more shot, at O'Leary, before quitting the killing for hire business. But this time around he has a partner that he hadn't counted on to help him with the job his girlfriend Laurel Pearson to cover, unlike his late boss Roman, his back. Tender May to December love story between two people from different sides of the track who meet at a funeral parlor and later fall in love at an AA meeting hall. It's only after that one last hit-job on Irish mob boss Edward O'Leary- in revenge or payment in him having Roman knocked off-that the two love birds can kick it off and start a new crime free life in the "Golden State" in "The City by the Bay".

I enjoy dark comedy and I found myself drawn into the story in the beginning. Ben Kingsley is excellent as a Polish hit-man with an alcohol problem who gets sent to AA. Téa Leoni is equally good as his lover although their chemistry is less than perfect. For the most part the supporting cast do a good job, yet as a whole it is not good. For a dark comedy to be funny something has to happen, but here it's mostly a drama with incredulous characters thrown in together. Perhaps the quality of the acting here detracts from the film because as a drama the story fails and it never really becomes a comedy.I get the feeling that director John Dahl realized it was to realistic and that's why he tried to get a comedic mood with some wacky music, but it doesn't help.If you find peoples pain a laughing matter then you'll laugh at You Kill Me. No? Then you'll sit through a pointless but well acted film.

I can say that I have really killed my time with this movie. There is nothing happening in it, it is a mixture of stories in which a hit-man after fails to fulfill a mission as he slept, is sent by his uncle to San Francisco to take a little vacation to recovery. Here he goes to meet a group of alcoholics anonymous where he meets his contact person. He takes a part-time job at a funeral home where he meets his half and after being an average woman reaches by the end of the movie to be a professional assassin only after he showed her some techniques of handling the knife. Too bad the movie did not come out much better especially with a cast so great.

Comedy? What's so funny about watching an ugly deadbeat alcoholic attending 6 sessions (by the time I turned it off) of alchoholics anonymous? Set off by a woeful script of grunts and mumbles and drunken slurrings. Served up with lashings of Hollywood's religious "God will Save you" redemption drivel Another Reviewer mentioned the "Sassy dialogue" of Tea Leone - well I managed to watch nearly an hour of this boring film and I still haven't seen any sassy yet - in fact my 80 year old grandmother has more amusing comebacks than Tea's character in this rubbish. Tea is more stony faced and shows less emotion than Keanu - in fact one wonders if she too isn't addicted to something - maybe botox her face is so wooden? Save yourself from being killed with boredom from this film.