Frank Falenczyk (Ben Kingsley) is a hit-man for the Polish mob in Buffalo but the drinking is getting in the way. He is forced to sober up in San Francisco. Tom (Luke Wilson) is his sponsor from AA, and he gets a mortician job. He falls for Laurel Pearson (Téa Leoni) who loves older men because they're done testing.Ben Kingsley is going deadpan acting in this one. He's especially proud of the precision in his killings. It's not the killing that he regrets. It's the lack of professionalism when he was drinking. It's a quirky character. He, Leoni, and Wilson are all likable people. They talk about the craziest things nonchalantly. It's a rather low energy affair. It's a quirky and cute cast, but they're not necessarily laugh out loud funny. Kingsley is too calm. He needs to play up the wackiness.

You Kill Me is a nice film that could have been better if it hadn't gotten so caught up in its own premise.Frank (Ben Kingsley) is hit-man and primary muscle for a Polish crime family in Buffalo. I've never really heard of the Polish Mafia before, but apparently they've got it in Buffalo. Frank is also a drunk and when he drinks too much he passes out, missing his chance to kill the head of a rival Irish crime family (all criminals seem to be ethnic in Buffalo), the head of the Polish mob, Frank's uncle, sends his alcoholic nephew to San Francisco to dry himself out. Out on the Left Coast, Frank gets a job preparing the bodies for showing at a funeral home, starts going to AA meetings and meets a really tough chick named Laurel (Tea Leoni). But as Frank tries to stop drinking so he can get back to killing, his crime family back home gets more and more squeezed by its enemies. Though Frank wants to see what he can make of life with Laurel, he's drawn back to Buffalo to make one final stand.I would guess that synopsis doesn't sound like a particularly funny movie, but You Kill Me is fairly amusing. Kingsley creates in Frank a none-too-bright, emotionally unaware "fish out of water", whether he's in an AA meeting or nervously asking Laurel out on a date. Frank also has an utter lack of hypocrisy about what he does for a living and why he does it. The story does ask you to accept that no one cares or gets upset when Frank tells them he kills people. I know that San Francisco is supposed to be all tolerant and stuff, but you would think that the folks out there would recoil just a bit from someone who performs murder-for-hire.Tea Leoni is also quite nice as a woman who's smarter and in some ways tougher than her professional killer boyfriend. But the movie never does enough with Laurel and that's related to its main weakness. T he idea of a hit-man being sent out to San Francisco to stop drinking and "get in touch with himself" is pretty neat, but the story gets trapped in that concept. Once Frank gets out there, you become interested in him and in Laurel and in the other people he meets out there, like his gay AA sponsor Tom (Luke Wilson). There's a funny and charming dynamic that develops but gets cut off as the movie keeps going back to the state of Frank's crime family in Buffalo. To the audience, though, there's no real reason to care about what happens to the Polish mob or bother with why they're better than the Irish mob or the Greek mob or the Chinese mob.One of the tricks of writing is learning to recognize that you may intend a story to go in one direction but once you start, the story may want to unfold in a completely different way. You Kill Me wanted to stay in San Francisco and say more about this world and these people Frank found himself with. For example, what burned Laurel so badly in life that a short, bald, middle aged assassin looks like great relationship material to her because…at least he's honest? But these filmmakers weren't paying enough attention to their own film to see that.You Kill Me is mildly entertaining, mostly for the good work of Kingsley and Leoni, but it's one of those movies that you can tell could have been a lot better.

I am a Polish guy from the fine city of Buffalo. This movie was filmed in Canada where there must not be any polish people to help with accents or pronunciation. Buffalo is a cheap city to film in. Why be in Canada? Just one sky line shot would have been nice. The story wasn't memorable. It wasn't really important to me i like to see my city and culture portrayed the right way. Screw Flanders!! And extra lineScrew Flanders again.Go Sabers! TO Screwed buffalo over!How many lines do i have now?

Writer/director John Dahl reinvented film noir for modern audiences with "Red Rock West" and "The Last Seduction" and although "You Kill Me" isn't up there with those spiky gems this droll macabre comedy/romance is a welcome return to form after forgettable flicks like "Unforgettable" and "Joy Ride". Sir Ben Kingsley gives a deliciously deadpan performance as an alcoholic Polish-American killer for hire named Frank Falenczyk. "Every time we send you out I have to make a call to find out if they're dead," moans mob boss Roman Krzeminski (Phillip Baker Hall). "I can't trust you anymore, Frank. Even if you are my nephew." Sent to Los Angeles to dry out the lonely hit-man finds unlikely redemption when he gets a job in a mortuary and meets a melancholy misfit played by Tea Leoni at her tart twisted best. Jeff Daniels has some funny lines as, well, let's have him tell us in his own words: "In a town with a ten percent vacancy rate a real estate agent is god, and that's what I am, a real estate agent."