Hit Me

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

This is an utterly putrid film of Jim Thompson's terrific novel, "A Swell-Looking Babe." In adapting the book for the screen, writer Denis Johnson has stripped the novel of all its dark humor and subtext and given us a tepid and dull film.

Gone are the father and the whole McCarthyism subplot, which is crucial to what the protagonist does. And Thompson's denouement was dripping with irony.

Thompson's protagonist was a multi-layered character who had good reasons for what he did. Here, Elias Koteas is just a boring hotel employee. No offense to the actress who plays the femme fatale, but the role needs someone with a lot more substance than she brings to it.

William H. Macy might be highlighted on the DVD box, but he has just one scene. That's it. Come to think of it, he might have been better in the lead role.

Do yourself a favor. Instead of renting this piece of crap, read the novel. Your time and money would be better spent.

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

I absolutely loved this movie. I hopelessly found myself attached to the emotions of the characters. The love he had for his brother, the hope that he could find love with this beautiful stranger, the despair of being lost in a dead-end job, the continuous struggle to escape his reality through his rash actions and desperation. If you have even been low like he was, you'd relate to everything in this movie. There's a chance you'll be bored watching it, but the actors and directors made me feel every emotion to the fullest in this film while making me think during and afterwards. I recommend it to anyone who like Darren Aronofsky films.

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.