Merry Gentleman, The : Movie Review




Title: The Merry Gentlemen
Starring: Michael Keaton, Kelly Macdonald
Directed By: Michael Keaton
UK Release Date: 12 April 2010
Running Time: 110 minutes
Certificate: 15

Originally filmed way back in 2008 (if not before) this seems to have taken an age to reach the cinema and subsequently DVD. Hold on… there is a good reason for its delay. I will explain.
Michael Keaton (who’s career seems to have gone right off the boil and who hasn’t really done anything decent since Batman) is Frank Logan, a hitman. Kelly Macdonald (who was pretty decent in the Chuck Palahniuk penned, Choke) is Kate Frazier, a woman who has recently moved to a new town to escape her abusive boyfriend.

Just like every good mother, my mother used to say to me “if you can’t say anything good don’t say anything at all” – perfectly fine logic for normal life but terrible advice if you end p reviewing a film that you happen to think was a bit rubbish. The Merry Gentlemen happens to be one of those films. So, what can you say that is good about this film? Not a lot as it happens. For the first seven minutes of this film, not a single word is spoken. There is a short conversation that follows and then about another three minutes of dead silence as the characters are set up for the film. We see the back story that explains why Kate has moved to a new city. Well what we actually see is her explaining away the fact that she has a black eye with a couple of unconvincing stories and a number of men asking her out on dates and asking her is she has an abusive husband or boyfriend. We also see Frank killing a few people, with no reason whatsoever apart from the fact that he is presumably being paid for his services. Services that he is clearly not all that comfortable with.

Kate and Frank eventually meet after she sees him after one of hit ‘hits’. We think that he will kill her but apparently she doesn’t realise that it was him she saw and the two begin a relationship. Exactly what sort of relationship, sexual, friends, nurse/patient is not made clear. But to be honest I didn’t really care. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would find the character of Kate remotely interesting. She is dull, quiet, reserved, and clearly carrying emotional baggage. MacDonald irritatingly plays her as ‘little girl lost’ throughout the entire running time of the film. If I’d have been Keaton’s character I’d have killed her as a ‘pick me up’.

Keaton is adequate in the role, but never exceeds this. The direction (also by Keaton) is pretty poor, on top of the minutes of footage that are silent for no particular reason (those first seven minutes in particular failing to grab my interest from the start) the rest of the film is really very dull. Nothing really happens, at least not of any interest and we’ve forced to watch twice over as one of the characters (an actually quite likable cop) takes Kate out to dinner and twice fails to impress her, in fact repels her. This is a fairly good summation of the film itself. Not at all merry. Quite repellent and thoroughly lacking of a compelling storyline.

It might feature a hitman, but this is definitely one that is way off target.

Author : Kevin Stanley