Hit Me

I waited patiently for Koteas' agonizingly slow and neurotic performance to pay off. Just when I thought I was going to be rewarded, I was not. By the end I wanted them all to get shot, including the lovely French Canadian woman. I must say, however, that I thought that the film was beautifully shot and faithful, at least partially, to the film-noir ideal. Unfortunately, none of the characters performances made the plot bearable. Even the title has little relevance. They never showed a card game, any card game. I would have settled for the Windows 95 version of solitaire by the end. I was reminded of a watered-down cross between Cronnenberg and Lynch.

Been on a Jim Thompson adaptation kick recently, both novels and film adaptations. This film captures his small time screwed up loser desperation universe perfectly, I don't know how close to the book A Swell Looking Dame, it is, it is next on my to read pile, but as a stand alone film it works. It's a great Neo Noir and I got a bit of a Blue Velvet Lynch-esque vibe from it, though a comparatively low key vibe but in a good way.

Elias Koteas performance as Sonny the goof ball night bellhop really shines. Sonny stuck in a dead end job is reduced to swiping hotel VHS players and cases of hotel booze to make ends meet. He is supporting, on his own, his mentally challenged older brother. Sonny occasionally even pimps hookers to lonely business men out of hotel rooms. After multiple viewings a fragment of cinematic memory finally "hit me", think of what a good, serious, tragic-comedic Red Skelton performance may have looked like in a film noir, some of Koteas' facial expressions are that dead on, but other comedians like Huntz Hall also come to mind. This probably flew over the heads of the then current (1996) film demographic for most of whom Skelton and Hall are non entities. But Koteas goes even further creating his own believable lunatic of a character who constantly talks to himself and habitually is physically pumping up his ego for various tasks by acting out and letting fly with compulsive manic gestures.

Laure Marsac as Monique Roux simmers delectably, a soiled dove-ish French Canadian griffter/hostess/hooker, the femme fatale of the film. The seemingly incessant Tacoma rains depresses her character to the point of despair. Marsac ranges all the way from waifish crumbling beauty, to sloe eyed temptress, and finally boils as a deadly Diana in an explosive chase sequence set in the streets of a deserted warehouse district. Her sole life quest focusing her character, seems to be to get to "Gay Paree" any way she can by any low life means possible. She carries an Eiffel Tower tchotchke that lights up and plays her leitmotif. It acts as a sort of dream navigation beacon to mother ship Paris. She's fun to watch.

Jay Leggett plays Sonny's childlike dependent older brother Leroy, practically house bound in a "crazy house" dwelling strewn with food containers & decorated with discarded toys. He is way over weight, a good natured human Muppet who tells Sonny that he wants to go to Foster Care because there he can eat all the ice cream he wants.

Kevin J. O'Connor is Cougar, a harelip scarred, sadistic thug of a loan shark who has recently become the hotel security man, Bruce Ramsay is Del a former bellhop buddy of Sonny who has hit the big time. He connives Sonny into a plan to rob a high stakes illegal poker game.

Philip Baker Hall is great as Lenny Ish, the hotel's biggest client and the local mobster who grouses that he used to live in "a five star country".

William H. Macy unexpectedly shows up in a great little cameo as a homicide detective. J. C. Quinn and Haing S. Ngor play Sonny's fellow night shift employees.

The studio sets capture the cheapo 2-3 star hotel world, and a nice opening montage shows Sonny schlepping through his various dead end bellhop job duties in the bowels of hotel housekeeping, accompanied by a plucky melody that becomes Sonny's leitmotif. Later when Sonny & Monique make love their two leitmotifs combine into a nice score by Peter Manning Robinson.

Of course, being a Neo Noir everything goes terribly wrong for ridiculously simple reasons, in this case a change of diet, and the film leaves Sonny and Leroy setting off on a trip to Nowheresville, sitting in their rusty, trusty beater Chevy, orbiting the edge of the Twilight Zone in the universe of lost dreams.

9/10

Hit Me, Steven Shainberg's (Secretary) directorial debut has a lot going for it including a great cast and a truly striking set to utilize. Unfortunately, the story is utterly ridiculous. The first half hour is a long, drawn out affair I guess to establish Elias Koteas' character, who seems to be nothing more than a series of ticks. We find out he has a brother who is mentally retarded, and the state wants to take away, but Elias will not let them happen. On the verge of losing his job at a two star hotel, he becomes involved in an incident (which I won't reveal here) that is so muddled, so badly played out and so unbelievable that I found it hard to believe that the rest of the motivations of the characters in this movie, rested on it. If the source material (a Jim Thompson novel) was unclear,

Shainberg certainly didn't make it any clearer which leads to the main character entering into a heist for truly inane reasons. It's hard to get excited about a heist when the reasoning behind it is virtually nonexistent. Yes, there are heists for the sake of heists - and often that works fine - but this film spends a lot of time and energy trying to establish some reason for this to take place, but fails to convince.

Good film noir, relies on amoral men, sexual women and desperate desires. Hit Me which claims to be a film noir is simply desperate - for a good story and a stronger execution.

This movie kind of took me by surprise. I thought it was going to be another semi boring heist flick, but it wasn't. I think it had some genuinely interesting points to make about one's own desperation and greed.

The movie tells the story of a lonely and frustrated bellhop (koteas)who stumbles into a plan to rob a group of wealthy card sharks who are going to take part in an illegal poker game. A slew of mistakes and fumbles occur which leads to an unfortunate (in my opnion) ending.

Koteas gives a very edgy performance and makes the movie all by himself. The rest of the cast also does their part too, in particular the actor who plays koteas's childlike brother, quite a convincing portrayal.

I give "Hit Me" 9 out of 10

With the success of Secretary director Steven Shainberg's earlier film Hit Me nows comes out on DVD. Unfortunately Hit Me would have benefited from a more experienced director adapting the source material, Jim Thompson's novel A Swell Looking Babe. Thompson's work has been extremely difficult to film inasmuch as most of his writing relates to the inner thoughts and emotions of his characters, rather that simply plot and dialog. Director Shainberg and leading man Elias Koteas attempt to deal with this through an over the top display of physical acting. If facial contortions represent emotion then obviously even more facial contortions represents even more emotion. This is combined with leading lady Laure Marsac who is blank faced throughout the film (although this French actress might have had trouble in English). Jim Thompson's novels contain a strong element of black comedy and initially, based on these acting choices and the bright lighting not associated with noir films, I thought Shainberg was going for black comedy. Imagine my surprise, as the film progressed and I discovered that we were supposed to take this seriously. It completely fails to work. It is not dark enough to reflect Thompson's noir and not comedic enough to reflect Thompson's black comedy. These choices ultimately have to laid at the feet of director Shainberg. Of the lesser characters, William H. Macy, highlighted in the DVD advertising, has a single short scene as a cop questioning Koteas. Macy is amusing as he cites the last meals of various killers. Philip Baker Hall uses his strong presence to offset a poorly written character. Tragically this was Haing S. Ngor's last film before he was senselessly killed in a robbery. He has only a few lines, as a hotel clerk, and its sad to think that this is the last role for an Academy award winner (The Killing Fields). All in all, you would be more entertained buying Thompson's novel than buying this DVD.