The Sorrow and the Pity

 Digging through the queue for more titles that have lingered there a long time.

YOU KILL ME (2007) (A-minus) - Credit, first and foremost, must go to writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely for their meticulous script about an alcoholic hitman who is sent from Buffalo to San Francisco to dry out while the Polish crew he has left behind in upstate New York faces extinction against the other ethnic gangs.

It is upon that foundation that Ben Kingsley kills it as down-on-his-luck Frank, buoyed by a brash younger woman, Laurel, brought to sarcastic life by Tea Leoni. They have a Tracy-Hepburn snap to their interactions. Then throw in a fine supporting cast -- Bill Pullman as a sleazy realtor who keeps an eye on Frank; Luke Wilson as Frank's AA sponsor; Philip Baker Hall as the beleaguered head of the Polish family; and good ol' Dennis Farina as the swaggering Irish mob boss. They all are in on the fun.

It's a delicious mix helmed by John Dahl, the onetime neo-noir darling ("Red Rock West," "The Last Seduction"), who paces this to near-perfection. Frank gets a temporary job at a mortuary, where he has his meet-cute with Lauren. He struggles with sobriety and she puts up with his shortcomings in a city where it's tough to find eligible straight men. 

The writers Markus and McFeely (one grew up in Buffalo, the other in the Bay Area) share the quirks of their hometowns and show off a subtle touch with sly one-liners. When Frank meets Wilson's Tom at the snack table at an AA meeting, Tom asks Frank if it's his first time, and Frank quips back, "No, I've had cookies before." When Frank, half-joking, asks Lauren a few days after their first date if she's pregnant, she replies, "Not unless you put something in my egg roll. And then put the egg roll in my--". The writing team would go on to a career in the Marvel universe, an unfortunate waste of banter.

Kingsley inhabits this pitiful hitman, who doesn't regret the assassinations he has executed, but merely the sloppy way he did them while drunk.  Leoni goes toe-to-toe with Sir Ben and holds her own. Pullman is a one-man Greek chorus, tossing off oblique observations in an off-kilter dem-bums patois. It all builds nicely to a denouement back in Buffalo, as it's inevitable that Frank will eventually return to try to save the gang. In the hands of Dahl (who would go on to slum mostly in the TV industry), this is sharp storytelling.

MY JOY (2010) (B-minus) - I'm not embarrassed to say that I paused this movie halfway through in order to look up the plot on Wikipedia so that I could figure out what the hell was going on. (I kept the page open to help guide me through to the film's landing.) It's a tough story to follow, with limited signposts; the main actor changes his look rather dramatically halfway through, and I honestly couldn't tell it was him.

This is ostensibly the story of a humble truck driver, Georgy (Viktor Nemets), who gets knocked off course and goes into a physical and mental tailspin. Early on, while hauling flour somewhere in Russia, he picks up an old man (Vladimir Golovin) who tells him a story, aided by flashbacks, of getting ripped off by a fellow soldier during the last days of World War II in Germany.  Both Germany (during WWII) and the old man (in the present) will eventually return to the story. Characters will have multiple connections. Georgy will get attacked and be struck dumb and be kept by a woman until she sells off his truck and abandons him. 

This tale from a dozen years ago sprouted from the mind of Sergei Loznitsa (who alternates between documentaries like "State Funeral" and features like "Donbass"). It is a harrowing tale of a man in a mundane spiral. If you don't mind the narrative and visual challenges, there is an appeal to both the drone and the jerkiness of the plot, the hypnotic effect of this serpentine two-hour journey. The best scenes are the bookends involving two military guards at a traffic checkpoint that seems to be in the middle of nowhere. Not much happens in the opening scene, and then everything happens when we return for the final scene. It all ends with a chilling, memorable fade to black.

BONUS TRACKS

"You Kill Me" has an eclectic soundtrack, heavy on the doo-wop oldies. Devotchka croons over the opening credits with "Vengo! Vengo!":

Geraint Watkins chirps through "My Happy Day":