You Kill Me (2007)

"My name is Frank, and I'm an alcoholic."

Frank (Sir Ben Kinglsey) is also a hitman for the Polish mafia in Buffalo in John Dahl's You Kill Me. Dahl - and a riveting performance by Kingsley - succeed in making an alcoholic murderer an endearing protagonist, so it's a good thing that the film doesn't rely on anything but the character of Frank Falenczyk.

Frank, who's been sent by "the family" to San Francisco to dry out, meets up with an AA sponsor (an understated Luke Wilson) and falls in love with a girl named Laurel (Tea Leoni). That's just the first act of the movie, and for me to describe in any detail the second half of the film would be to give away a few plot surprises, including whether or not Frank manages to stay sober - perhaps a bigger challenge than rival mobster O'Leary (Dennis Farina).

The script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely is one of the funnier ones from 2007 with enough laughs to keep the movie clipping along without getting bogged down in a punchline-a-thon. And a great deal of the laughs come from Kingsley's intense portrayal, wherein he never seems to break character. Although he doesn't look Polish and doesn't always sound Polish, Kingsley forces you to believe that he is Frank.

I called Luke Wilson "understated" because he seems at times to have phoned in his performance, alternating between genuine concern for Frank's sobriety and empty presence on the screen. Ditto for Tea Leoni, who is supposed to be playing a complex wounded bird but who never seems to get anything across with her role other than a body for Kingsley to face as he delivers his lines. Dennis Farina and Philip Baker Hall, as rival mob bosses in Buffalo, are interesting, but they're not given enough screentime and so function as buffers between scenes about Frank.

There are a lot of better movies than You Kill Me, but this is a smart comedy - short and sweet. I can't praise Kingsley enough for really immersing himself in the role, and I'm afraid I have little else to say about the film. So let's just say this - if Alcoholics Anonymous was this fun, we'd have more in recovery.