SnoopyStyle Kate Frazier (Kelly Macdonald) escapes from her abusive policeman husband Michael (Bobby Cannavale). She moves to Chicago living an isolated life avoiding questions about her black eye. Professional assassin Frank Logan (Michael Keaton) is becoming suicidal. She sees his silhouette after his latest kill. Police detective Murcheson takes an interest in her. She befriends Frank over a Christmas tree, not knowing his real job.It's a sad, slow march in the first half. Macdonald and Keaton keep the interest quite well. Murcheson needs a more compelling actor. Keaton takes his first step into directing. He has a steady and confident hand. His performance has the quiet intensity. Cannavale has a great threatening sensibility. I would love to see Keaton attempt another directing gig.

Ed-Shullivan I really enjoyed this movie for a couple of reasons. Michael Keaton played a really good hit man, and the movie style I thought was a throwback to the 1950's era movies that were crime related. The movie had that very dark and moody style, with a great edge to the movie style. It keeps you anticipating what is going to happen next. The movie also had a plot with the damsel in distress running away from her abusive relationship. You just knew her ex-lover was going to cross paths with her again at some point. I also thought Michael Keaton did an admirable job of directing himself in the movie, and providing his cast with opportunities to share the stage with him and also have a good performance. Bobby Cannavale played the frustrated and sometimes violent ex-lover, with a troubled soul. On the down side, the movie was a bit slow during certain parts, but the ending was better than I actually expected and was a nice surprise. This movie is well worth a watch and I would recommend seeing it.

rddj05 I applaud Keaton for taking his shot behind the camera. However, when I watched the film, I did not know he had directed it. But sometimes, as an audience member, you simply get the feeling about 10-15 minutes in, that you may not in very reliable, or skilled hands. That was the case with The Merry Gentleman.The problems mainly lay with the script. There are FAR too many improbabilities and convenient coincidences in the story to make it believable, and these start to become more and more noticeable as the film goes on. By the time I got half-way through the film, I still didn't have much of an idea of what the central motive of either character was, especially Michael Keaton, and after awhile, I began to stop caring. Michael Keaton plays a professional hit-man, though we never know for who, or why, or even anything about his targets. All we know is that he appears to be terribly sad about it. He is suicidal (the way his first attempt is foiled is practically out of a Buster Keaton comedy), but I would think that a character who was a professional hit-man would come up with far simpler and effective methods to off himself than the ones he attempts in the movie. A gun, maybe? Also, if he's so tortured about what he does, wouldn't make sense for him to kill himself BEFORE you completes another job?? We never really find out much about this character as he slowly moves through the film mumbling a word here or a word there. Even in a scene in a hospital scene that appears to be inserted into the film to try and give the audience some idea of who this character is, we still get nothing...and that nothing takes a whole lot of time to get to. There is a strange plot twist in the 2nd half of the film, where writer tries to tie up the loose end of the abusive husband. All I can say is that it involves yet another convenient coincidence involving a business card to a local hotel.Kelly McDonald, a fine actress, is really the lead of the film, but even here the writer didn't give her character much logic to work with. The film opens with her leaving her abusive husband after he gives her a nasty shiner. Somehow, within a few days, she is suddenly in a new city, with a new job. Just like that. How this all happened, again is a mystery. Even though the black eye is something she'd rather hide and not talk about, she bizarrely shows up at an office Christmas party where she certainly must know that she'll be asked about it repeatedly (which, of course, she is) . Obviously not wanting to jump into any new relationships due to her abusive past, she rejects the advances of a few of her new co- workers, but then inexplicably falls for Michael Keaton's character after one brief run-in, who, in their first meeting, comes off as a bit, well....creepy. For a smart girl, she also seems completely clueless that a police officer investigating a case she's involved in as a witness, is interested in her romantically. The light takes a while to go on apparently.All and all, there's never enough of anyone's life to really dig into, but more a 2-dimensional picture of it all. The look and tone of the film is a bit of a mess. There is a slew of completely unmotivated camera moves and cuts that defy all logic, almost as if Keaton was terrified of having the film look too plain. As a result, it winds up being a mishmash of different styles that belong in a dozen different films. This could also be said of the mind-boggling score and music cues. In the end, it seems like the film really didn't know what it wanted to be; sometimes a gritty drama, sometimes a Billy Wilder comedy, sometimes a teary melodrama, and sometimes a Basic Instinct-type thriller. Though the last 20 minutes of the film do actually do manage to build some tension through proper pacing, the ending is simply befuddling. There's a difference between leaving an ending open because you want to challenge the audience into thinking about what might happen, and leaving an ending open because you simply can't come up with a proper or satisfying one. I can only imagine that this film got made because the writer knew Keaton, Keaton signed on to play the (quite undeveloped) lead role, and the financing followed from there.

bob-rutzel-1 Frank Logan (Keaton) is a hit man and he suspects Kate (MacDonald) can place him at the scene of his last hit. This is slow moving, but if you look at it as a cat and mouse game it's a non-issue. The thing that really saves this movie is Kate's Scottish accent. You cannot get enough of it regardless or what else is going on. Okay, the movie would save itself anyway, but when Kate speaks, you listen because you really don't know anything about her, and that accent is pure heaven. Maybe it is the accent. The title is somewhat misleading. There is nothing merry about Frank Logan as you will see. Merry is used because it is Christmas time and he does act the part of a gentleman. See? Seems it is all a matter of some misdirection, but only in the title, not in the story. This is Michael Keaton's first attempt at directing and since I enjoyed the movie, I'd say he did a good job of it. He brought the right amount of suspense and tension throughout the story. And, to have selected Kelly MacDonald to play Kate, with that accent is pure genius. I guess you can tell I really like the Scottish accent. Violence: Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: Yes, some