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Directed By
Steven Shainberg
Written By:
Jim Thompson, Denis Johnson
Cast:
Elias Koteas, Bruce Ramsay, Kevin J. O'Connor, Philip Baker Hall, J.C. Quinn, Haing S. Ngor, William H. Macy, Jack Conley, Tom Lillard, Jay Leggett, Laure Marsac, Jay Leggett, Arthur Senzy
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Hit Me (1996)
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Movie Review by Zara 
January 24th, 2007
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It means you haven't done it yet
I like oddballs. Some people call them weirdos. Some people call them eccentrics. It doesn't really matter which term you prefer to use. I like characters who vibrate off of a movie screen. I especially like to see these characters dropped into strange scenes. To be set up in moments of desperation or humiliation, just to see how they react. I like it when a story starts at point A and winds up off the map before reaching a point B that you never dreamed would exist. HIT ME is based on a novel by Jim Thompson, author of The Grifters and is directed by the man who brought us SECRETARY. I loved this movie.
Elias Koteas is Sonny, a tired and pathetic bellhop for a 2 star hotel looking to gain back its 3 star status. Sonny owes some bad people money. He's trying to care for his developmentally disabled brother and avoid having him taken as a ward of the state. When a mobster comes through the hotel, looking to hold an illegal poker tournament, another hotel employee approaches him with a proposition to rob it. In an act of desperation, Sonny agrees to go along with the plot. Sounds like a standard mobster issue. Difference is there's a girl. Well, alright, there's usually a girl. This time it is the doe-eyed Laure Marsac as Monique, a woman whose desperation parallels Sonny's when he first meets her. Their attraction is instant and intensely palpable. She is a part of the scheme, another pawn in a set-up that goes from bad to worse to horrible.
Koteas is brilliant, playing Sonny through glances and fidgety moves. This is a character that lives inside of his head, and Koteas manages to get you to feel the disbelief and pain over his situation. There is never a safe moment to this flick. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop so many times that I started to think I needed to have a half dozen feet to keep up. But the coup de gras was the ending. You know how I always mention that I'm most satisfied when all you end up left with is a sense of emptiness and a feeling of "What the f*ck?" Well, HIT ME left me more satisfied than a redneck at an army surplus store. Which is just the kind of satisfied that I like best.
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