Kelly Macdonald, so memorable as the tragic victim of a psychotic assassin in No Country for Old Men, becomes another hit man's best friend in The Merry Gentleman.
She should have quit while she was ahead.
This attenuated urban mood piece is filled with Christian imagery and is also Communion wafer-thin.
It stars Michael Keaton as morose professional killer Frank Logan. Office worker Kate Frazier (Macdonald) startles him out of suicide when she looks skyward to catch sight of the year's first snow and sees him teetering on a building ledge across the street.
Frazier has just moved to Chicago, on the run from an abusive cop husband (Bobby Cannavale). She and Logan really meet when she lands in the foyer of her apartment house under her newly purchased Christmas tree. Once again, she looks up, and there's Logan, who this time helps her out. She doesn't recognize him as the jumper who didn't jump. She sees him as a Good Samaritan - or maybe one of the merry gentlemen from the "God Rest You ...." Christmas carol.
In the course of the movie, one character calls Frazier a "suicide magnet," and another says she's always "looking up." Macdonald, against all odds, creates a character who makes sense from both descriptions. She's not a guardian angel, exactly, but she is a woman whose hopefulness and surprising strength snag the interest of flawed or needy men. Her integrity and apparent depth touch Logan and rouse the interest of a cop, Dave Murcheson (Tom Bastounes), who is investigating the botched suicide and the murder Logan committed just before it.
The scenes between Macdonald and each man have distinct tensions.
Frazier doesn't want to say anything about her past. Logan can't. Murcheson guesses that Frazier has a troubled past. But he is unable to separate romantic desire from his selfless motives and his crime-fighting instincts.
Screenwriter Ron Lazzeretti touches on the ambiguity of first (and second) impressions and the craziness of sad, lonely men. But the characters' interchanges never deepen or vary. They ultimately register as acting exercises.
The Merry Gentleman, a laconic star turn for Keaton, also marks his filmmaking debut. He boasts an acute ear for conversational rhythms. He wants to capture the meaning within silences.
But sometimes, a silence is just a silence; in The Merry Gentleman they become dead air. And too many unplumbed questions pile up - including some whoppers, such as: If killing depresses Logan, why does he keep doing it, even when he's not on the job?
The film has a shivery look but too splintery a script. Even with Macdonald, it comes up three stops short of fascinating.
The Merry Gentleman
(Samuel Goldwyn) Starring Michael Keaton, Kelly Macdonald and Tom Bastounes. Directed by Michael Keaton. Rated R for language and some violence. Time 110 minutes
