YOU KILL ME
Opens Friday areawide

Sexy beast - Kingsley as a contract killer.

Sir Ben Kingsley is a strange case. Although Kingsley hails from the stentorian school of classical British thespians (Olivier, Burton, all the Old Vic hambones), he seems to be under the delusion he's a graduate of Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio instead. That kind of perverse dichotomy makes Kingsley fascinating to watch since you're never quite certain what, or whom, you're going to encounter from role to role. The fact that both Kingsleys are equally affected - and profoundly, fussily actorish - ultimately renders the comparison moot.

The Kingsley in You Kill Me is the same Method-centric Sir Ben from Sexy Beast, yet his neutral-American accent sounds less natural on Kingsley's tongue than the Cockney dialect he nailed in Jonathan Glazer's 2001 arthouse hit. At least I think the You Kill Me Kingsley is trying for neutral American here. Frank Falenczyk, his Polish-American Buffalo hit man, speaks with some weird sort of uncategorizable inflection, but hell if I could place it. As a result, I found myself more distracted than amused by Kingsley's twangy, alky contract killer.

Fortunately, You Kill Me is so sharply written - by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely of (egads!) Chronicles of Narnia fame - and expertly acted (by everyone else) that Kingsley's eccentric mannerisms are less annoying than they would have been in a flimsier vehicle. John Dahl's blithely entertaining screwball noir marks a strong career comeback for this accomplished director after the regrettable detour of 2005's somnambulant WWII prison escape drama, The Great Raid. It's great having him back on terra firma again.

The film opens in wintry, monochromatic Buffalo where curmudgeonly, booze-addled Frank has just bungled a hit for his snowplow-king uncle (a wryly deadpan Philip Baker Hall). Because Frank's mobster family genuinely cares about him - and since a drunken hit man is bad for business - he's shipped off to San Francisco to dry out.

Once ensconced in the city by the bay, Frank takes a mortician's assistant gig at a local funeral parlor, joins AA (Luke Wilson is his bemused gay sponsor), gets an apartment from a shady realtor (Bill Pullman, priceless) and even begins dating Laurel, a high-powered female ad executive (the delicious Tea Leoni at her most Jean Arthur-ish).

Everything is hunky-dory until the sobered-up Frank is called back to Buffalo by his apoplectic cousin Stef (a terrific Marcus Thomas) to complete the assignment he messed up earlier by (literally) falling asleep on the job. A bon voyage speech to Laurel in which Frank regales her with a list of his character flaws - including chronic alcoholism and the whole hit man thing - is capped with the classic retort, "Nobody's perfect, Frank." The lengths to which Laurel is willing to go to keep her man is outrageously funny, more than a little scary and even kind of touching. But hey, it can't be easy finding a single straight man in San Francisco these days.

As enjoyable a romp as You Kill Me is, it's probably too low-key and droll to find much of a theatrical audience in today's super-saturated marketplace. (And opening it the same weekend as the latest Harry Potter flick is just plain stupid.) But anyone who discovers this diminutive bauble down the road somewhere - whether on cable or DVD - is bound to take it to heart. Who knows? By then, Sir Ben's crazy enunciation and speech patterns could begin to sound an awful lot like poetry.