I watched the movie You Kill Me this weekend. The story is about a mob hitman who is sent from Buffalo to San Francisco to deal with his alcoholism, as it is interfering with his work. The movie was so-so. It had some funny moments, and I am sure that some people would be a little drawn into the relationship that the main character establishes with a woman he meets while working for an undertaker. None of that appeared to be targeted to a person with my tastes, though. There is really only one reason this movie is noteworthy. It messes with my head a little to have a protagonist who I am supposed to care about who is also such an unsavory character.
Generally, I like it when the protagonist is shown to have weakness. No one is perfect, so it is not good to build characters that portray perfection. There is a point where I start getting a bit uncomfortable, though. It is so frequent that a protagonist about whose welfare I am supposed to care is actually far beyond flawed. For example, Pirates of the Caribbean, while entertaining, was largely a two-hour justification for the evils that composed piracy. In the Godfather series, and pretty much any other movie about organized crime, we are invited to see the world through the mobsters' eyes rather than the victims' of those mobsters eyes.
I suspect that the movie writers for these specific kinds of movies purposely try to make things a little ethically uncomfortable for the audience. The absence of this discomfort may make an otherwise entertaining movie bland. I'd still prefer to be taking the view of someone a little more ethical.
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Usually movies about flawed hit man are funny. Other hit man movies, the lead character is trying to get out of his line of work with one more final job. Then there is always the hit man who falls in love with his target. Seen them all before. I'll have to check this one out.
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