The Merry Gentleman

* * * *

Director: Michael Keaton

Cast: Michael Keaton, Kelly Macdonald, Bobby Cannavale, Darleen Hunt, Tom Bastounes

Time: 1:36

Rating: R; language and some violence

Where: Grand Cinema, 606 S. Fawcett Ave., Tacoma; showtimes, When she first sees him, he’s wrapped in evening shadows, standing on the edge of a roof. She screams “No!” and saves him. The first time he sees her, her face is raised to the heavens, arms outstretched like an angel, snow drifting around her. He hopes he won’t have to kill her.

That is the beginning of “The Merry Gentleman,” a dark and lovely drama about the complications of human connections that is Michael Keaton’s impressive directing debut. It is a haunting story, not exactly of love – it turns out there won’t be enough time for that to develop – but of the safety and comfort two damaged souls can find within each other.

Keaton, who has never been easy with a conventional career, stars as Frank Logan, a depressed hit man – the one who contemplated the death dive on that snowy evening just moments after putting a well-placed single shot into a businessman across the way. Although he’s extremely good at what he does – we will get a look at how inventive he can be – there’s just no satisfaction in it anymore.

She is Kate Frazier, a young, battered wife trying to escape her brutal cop of a husband and disappear into the gritty folds of a new city. Played with dignity and disarming innocence by Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald, Kate is completely unaware that the reserved man she encounters at her apartment house is the suicide she averted or that he’s mulling her fate as they talk.

Everything about the film is spare and refined: the economy of language of Ron Lazzeretti’s screenplay, the wintry urban world of a Chicago few will recognize caught by cinematographer Chris Seager, the quiet pitch of the performances. The story itself is compact – would the kindness of a bad man be more valuable if he were good?

Macdonald is a wonder in “The Merry Gentleman.” She brings a kind of ethereal quality to each of her roles and a lushness that you hope will never be beaten away by hours in a gym. We see fear and hope competing as she slowly lets Frank into her life.

Against that softness comes the hard, etched intensity of Keaton, who stays in a minor key even as their relationship grows. It is a great treat to see him walking in Frank’s heavy shoes.

Other characters swirl around Kate and Frank. Darleen Hunt is Kate’s friend from work, Bobby Cannavale the volatile husband and Tom Bastounes the local cop who uses his investigation into the derailed suicide to try to get close to Kate.

But they are ancillary to the beating heart of this film as we watch two broken people begin to heal. It is a bittersweet testament to the power of small, selfless acts and a reminder that you never know who will be the one to save you.