BEN Kingsley, who gave one of his best performances as a hit man in “Sexy Beast,” delivers a comic variation on the role in John Dahl’s dark, laugh-filled “You Kill Me.”
This time he’s Frank Falenczyk, a falling-down drunk who literally passes out just before a crucial killing assignment.
Frank’s furious Uncle Roman (Philip Baker Hall), who heads the Polish snowplowing racket in Buffalo, has had enough. He orders Frank exiled to San Francisco to dry out under the supervision of a sleazy realtor (Bill Pullman).
Frank is forced to very reluctantly attend AA meetings and go to work as an assistant to a cheery undertaker (Alison Sealy-Smith).
It’s through this new way of dealing with dead people that Frank has an unlikely romantic encounter with Laurel (Téa Leoni), an acerbic media sales rep.
Though he has the support of both Laurel and his AA sponsor, Tom (Luke Wilson), a gay toll collector on the Golden Gate Bridge, Frank struggles mightily with his sobriety.
The film’s central joke is that neither of them is troubled by Frank’s former line of work. Even the folks at the AA meeting are not entirely unsympathetic when Frank announces – in the movie’s funniest scene – that he wants to be sober so he can go back to killing people.
Frank’s opportunity comes soon enough when events summon him back to Buffalo to deal with the target of the job he botched in he first place, an Irish mobster (Dennis Farina) trying to take over the snowplow racket.
Dahl, who directed the cult favorites “The Last Seduction” and “Red Rock West,” is working Coen brothers territory here, and he gets uniformly good performances from a well-chosen cast.
It’s the best role in years for Leoni, but “You Kill Me” really belongs to Kingsley, whose character’s deadpan reactions to his new environment are priceless. He really kills.
YOU KILL ME
Terminally hilarious.
Running time: 92 minutes. Rated R (violence, profanity). At the Angelika, the Lincoln Square, the Chelsea, others.