‘Hit Me’ Strikes With Stylish Force

Given that it’s adapted from a Jim Thompson novel (“A Swell-Looking Babe”), “Hit Me” is a predictably plug-ugly, fatalistic thriller, a kind of Kafka after dark. And although director Steven Shainberg drifts a bit between dark absurdity and hard-boiled pulp, he does capture the desperation of small-time minds and the crazy logic of violence, as well as the sickly pallor of all-night employment and the desolation of an unwelcome dawn.

He also has--as the ill-fated hotel night man Sonny--Canadian actor Elias Koteas, who for years has done solid character turns in everything from Atom Egoyan’s “Exotica” to “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” but now he has center stage. He plays a cluelessly doomed, two-bit operator who succumbs to every temptation--including grand larceny--that comes his way. Even as he tells himself he shouldn’t.

Sonny’s is a take-out-the-trash, take-up-the-bags existence, exacerbated by his obese, mentally deficient brother Leroy (Jay Leggette), whom social services would like to take off his hands. Beleaguered at work, overburdened at home, Sonny is overwhelmed by the beautiful Monique (Laure Marsac), a troubled hotel guest who proves that Shainberg is best on the absurdist tack because she’s strictly unbelievable.

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But she’s also the engine of Sonny’s disaster, staging a theatrical suicide attempt, seducing him on the floor of her room and exhibiting such a lust for money that Sonny’s involvement in a poker-game rip-off spirals out of control and directly into mayhem.

Shainberg, making his feature debut, is blessed with a first-rate cast that includes Philip Baker Hall (Seinfeld’s library cop, as well as the star of “Hard Eight”), William H. Macy in a virtual cameo as Sonny’s interrogator, and the late, Oscar-winning Haing S. Ngor, who could and probably should have been cut from the film; his fate is eerily and distastefully similar to the incident that took his life two years ago. It’s a distracting moment in a movie that’s otherwise handled with a great deal of style and a definite sense of where it’s going.

* MPAA rating: R for strong violence and language, a scene of strong sexuality and some drug use. Times guidelines: a hard-boiled pulper inappropriate for younger audiences.

‘Hit Me’

Elias Koteas: Sonny

Laure Marsac: Monique

Jay Leggette: Leroy

Philip Baker Hall: Lenny

A Castle Hill production. Directed by Steven Shainberg. Screenplay by Denis Johnson, from the Jim Thompson novel “A Swell-Looking Babe.” Produced by Gregory Goodman, Steven Shainberg. Original music by Peter Manning Robinson. Cinematography Mark J. Gordon. Production design Amy Danger. Editing by Donn Aron. Running time: 2 hours, 4 minutes.

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