Buzz off, ye Merry Gentleman: a review.
Last Friday, 10 July, I saw a movie that Manohla Dargis' review in The New York Times (in the Friday, 1 May edition) got me all hot and bothered for: Michael Keaton's directorial debut, The Merry Gentleman.
While Dargis' tastes and sensibilities normally appear to be similar to my own, I'm coming to discover that they do sometimes diverge alarmingly: first with David Lynch's Inland Empire, and now with The Merry Gentleman.
Michael Keaton plays a taciturn, nearly mute hitman who calls himself Frank Logan (it is by no means certain that this is his real name) who has a day job as a tailor in a shop with the creepiest-looking proprietor this side of Joe Turkel. He is drawn out of his shell -- sort of -- by a troubled Scottish woman who happens to be in close proximity to one of his assassinations, Kate Frazier (Kelly Macdonald: No Country For Old Men, Trainspotting), who is nearly as alone and reserved as he is. Two dour and semi-comical detectives, Murcheson (Tom Bastounes) and Goldman (Guy Van Swearingen), meet Kate in an official capacity, and Murcheson -- a self-described chain-smoking, divorced, fat alcoholic -- pursues Kate romantically with an ineptitude that may well have you squirming in your seat more than chuckling.
Keaton and his screenwriter, Ron Lazzeretti, mostly keep things at a low heat, aiming for restrained understatement; unfortunately, this pot never comes close to reaching a boil, and, where Dargis praised The Merry Gentleman for "being true to something the movies tend to forget: that other people’s relationships are often mysterious," I simply didn't give a good goddamn about any of these characters, and particularly the two leads: Keaton here makes Chuck Norris look like Eli Wallach, and Macdonald's cloyingly winsome "good girl" shtick nearly sent me into a diabetic coma.
The thing that I think that Dargis missed in The Merry Gentleman is its framework of curdled Catholicism: Frank and Kate are both reasonably devout Catholics (even if they don't attend mass regularly), and it is this shared faith that makes them suited for each other, as much as their close-held secrets do; however, the symmetry in their moral characters -- one does wicked things and is really soft and tender, the other shows herself as warm and bruised and yearns to be very, very bad -- is more than a little cutesy-pie, and cliché, to work the way it's presented. What might've flown in a stripped-down genre picture is as desiccated here as last year's Christmas tree. For all of Lazzeretti's signs of talent -- and, despite the foregoing, I too would be interested in seeing more of his work -- he's a long way from "Greeneland."
There are good scenes -- all low key, mind -- in The Merry Gentleman; they just don't add up to a very good movie.
While Dargis' tastes and sensibilities normally appear to be similar to my own, I'm coming to discover that they do sometimes diverge alarmingly: first with David Lynch's Inland Empire, and now with The Merry Gentleman.
Michael Keaton plays a taciturn, nearly mute hitman who calls himself Frank Logan (it is by no means certain that this is his real name) who has a day job as a tailor in a shop with the creepiest-looking proprietor this side of Joe Turkel. He is drawn out of his shell -- sort of -- by a troubled Scottish woman who happens to be in close proximity to one of his assassinations, Kate Frazier (Kelly Macdonald: No Country For Old Men, Trainspotting), who is nearly as alone and reserved as he is. Two dour and semi-comical detectives, Murcheson (Tom Bastounes) and Goldman (Guy Van Swearingen), meet Kate in an official capacity, and Murcheson -- a self-described chain-smoking, divorced, fat alcoholic -- pursues Kate romantically with an ineptitude that may well have you squirming in your seat more than chuckling.
Keaton and his screenwriter, Ron Lazzeretti, mostly keep things at a low heat, aiming for restrained understatement; unfortunately, this pot never comes close to reaching a boil, and, where Dargis praised The Merry Gentleman for "being true to something the movies tend to forget: that other people’s relationships are often mysterious," I simply didn't give a good goddamn about any of these characters, and particularly the two leads: Keaton here makes Chuck Norris look like Eli Wallach, and Macdonald's cloyingly winsome "good girl" shtick nearly sent me into a diabetic coma.
The thing that I think that Dargis missed in The Merry Gentleman is its framework of curdled Catholicism: Frank and Kate are both reasonably devout Catholics (even if they don't attend mass regularly), and it is this shared faith that makes them suited for each other, as much as their close-held secrets do; however, the symmetry in their moral characters -- one does wicked things and is really soft and tender, the other shows herself as warm and bruised and yearns to be very, very bad -- is more than a little cutesy-pie, and cliché, to work the way it's presented. What might've flown in a stripped-down genre picture is as desiccated here as last year's Christmas tree. For all of Lazzeretti's signs of talent -- and, despite the foregoing, I too would be interested in seeing more of his work -- he's a long way from "Greeneland."
There are good scenes -- all low key, mind -- in The Merry Gentleman; they just don't add up to a very good movie.