you kill me movie review

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Has "The Sopranos" whacked the mob comedy? It sure feels that way -- at least for now. Just about anything is going to feel slight next to David Chase's 86-episode magnum opus, the rare genre piece that matches or exceeds its influences, from " The Godfather " movies to " GoodFellas ". But "You Kill Me" is as flimsy and uninspired as the double entendre of its title. It looks lightweight next to " Analyze This ." Maybe even " Analyze That ."

This time, the mobster doesn't go to a shrink, he goes to AA meetings. Drinking, you see, interferes with his work -- as a hit man. You can't kill people effectively if you're drunk and pass out before your mark arrives.

Although it is ostensibly set in present-day Buffalo and San Francisco, the comic sensibility of "You Kill Me" is curiously retrograde. The movie begins with a couple of Polish jokes under the opening credits. The first one is pretty good: Alcoholic contract killer Frank Falenczyk ( Ben Kingsley ) shovels his front sidewalk, repeatedly tossing his fifth of vodka into the snow as an incentive to keep forging ahead. The second one is just a setup/punchline gag overheard on a radio talk show: "How do you get a one-armed Polack out of a tree? You wave to him." From there, the movie switches targets and degenerates into a stream of gay jokes so witless they don't even qualify as jokes.

"You Kill Me" features extremely talented people doing everything they can to improve a thin and puerile script. Director John Dahl is a master of modern absurdist noir (" Red Rock West ," " The Last Seduction ," " Rounders "). Cinematographer Jeffrey Jur splashes the screen with intense blue and yellow gels and creates angular, shadow-streaked widescreen compositions that translate a noirish sensibility into vivid color. And the cast is a dream: Kingsley, Tea Leoni , Bill Pullman , Luke Wilson , and as rival mob bosses, Dennis Farina and Philip Baker Hall .

What do they have to work with? A tepid, dated screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely ("The Life and Death of Peter Sellers ") that feels like a first draft by a film-school sophomore. Maybe a second draft.

And then there's the scene where Kingsley, in his underwear, pulls a gun on a San Francisco city supervisor in his office. Why? Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were gunned down in San Francisco City Hall in 1978. What is the point? Is this supposed to be another unfunny homophobic gag in a movie strewn with them?

No offense to Sir Ben, who does a mean deadpan, but his performance here is frequently more dead than pan -- which, given the material, was probably the wisest acting choice. The accent is a bit wobbly, too. And the central love story... well, it's established that Leoni's character may be looking for a father figure, but the 23-year age difference between her and Kingsley is a bit tough to swallow. And it's not just any old 23-year age difference -- like, say, the one between 22 and 45 -- but, specifically, it's the one between Tia Leoni at 39 and Ben Kingsley at 62. That can make your stomach hurt just a little bit.

Now, if you want to see some really dark, funny, twisted hit man comedies, how about Wallace Wolodarsky's "Coldblooded" ( Jason Priestley , Peter Riegert , Robert Loggia ) or Saul Rubinek's "Jerry and Tom" ( Joe Mantegna , Sam Rockwell , Peter Riegert, with a script by Chicago theater vet Rick Cleveland ) -- both underappreciated, but much more potent and original than "You Kill Me." Or you could always rent " Grosse Pointe Blank " again.

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Film credits.

You Kill Me (2007)

Rated R for language and some violence

Tea Leoni as Laurel

Dennis Farina as Edward O'Leary

Ben Kingsley as Frank

Luke Wilson as Tom

Bill Pullman as Dave

Directed by

• Stephen McFeely
• Christopher Marcus

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You kill me.

Razor-sharp script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and the hilariously deadpan comic performances by Ben Kingsley and Tea Leoni make it a consistent pleasure.

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This review was written for the screening at the Tr ibeca Film Festival .

NEW YORK — If you would believe Hollywood movies, hit men are usually lovable figures whose professional lives are hampered by psychological angst that can usually be alleviated by therapy. Or, in the case of “You Kill Me,” in which the protagonist has a drinking problem, with a 12-step program. John Dahl’s black comedy might not win any points for originality, but its razor-sharp script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and the hilariously deadpan comic performances by Ben Kingsley and Tea Leoni make it a consistent pleasure. Recently showcased at the Tribeca Film Festival, the film is scheduled for a commercial release in the summer by IFC Films.

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Kingsley plays Frank, a Polish hit man in Buffalo who has bungled more than a few jobs because of his propensity for getting drunk on the job. When he fumbles the killing of a Greek mobster (Dennis Farina) who is his boss’ (Philip Baker Hall) chief rival, he’s sent to dry out in San Francisco.

There, thanks to the help of his handler (Bill Pullman), he gets a job as an undertaker’s assistant and begins attending AA meetings. Although initially resistant, he’s taken under the wing of a friendly fellow member (Luke Wilson) and soon begins to open up, confessing to the startled group not only his addiction but also his profession.

He also begins a relationship with the beautiful and acerbic Laurel (Leoni), who seems to have little problem with either Frank’s alcoholism or the way he makes his living. Frank’s idyllic recovery is eventually interrupted when the mobster he neglected to eliminate begins raising trouble for his employers.

While the film attempts a level of absurdity that it doesn’t quite successfully bring off — Laurel’s quick acceptance of Frank’s lifestyle is never convincing, for instance — it does mark the most hilarious depiction of a professional killer’s angst since “Grosse Pointe Blank.” The script’s subtle humor is consistently hilarious (Frank points out at the AA meeting that he never knew he had a drinking problem because he lives in Buffalo), and its comic gems are perfectly realized by the terrific performances and the deceptively atmospheric direction by Dahl.

Kingsley, not always known for his restraint, underplays beautifully as Frank, ultimately becoming an unlikely but entirely winning figure. And while Leoni is simply too stunningly gorgeous to render Laurel’s romantic desperation convincing, she too finds just the right comic tone. There is also wonderfully funny work by Wilson, Farina, Pullman and a variety of perfectly cast supporting players.

YOU KILL ME IFC Films Bipolar Pictures, Carol Baum Prods., Code Entertainment, Echo Lake Prods., Green Tulip Prods. Credits: Director: John Dahl Screenwriters: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely Producers: Al Corley, Burt Rosenblatt, Eugene Musso, Carol Baum, Mike Marcus, Zvi Howard Rosenman Executive producers: Tea Leoni, Jonathan Dana Director of photography: Jeffrey Jur Production designer: John Dondertman Music: Marcelo Zarvos Co-producer: Kim Olson Costume designer: Linda Madden Editor: Scott Chestnut Cast: Frank: Ben Kingsley Laurel: Tea Leoni Tom: Luke Wilson Roman: Philip Baker Hall O’Leary: Dennis Farina Dave: Bill Pullman Stef: Marcus Thomas Doris: Alison Sealy-Smith Running time — 92 minutes No MPAA rating

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You Kill Me (2007)

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You Kill Me

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Ben Kingsley (Frank Falenczyk) Téa Leoni (Laurel Pearson) Luke Wilson (Tom) Dennis Farina (Edward O'Leary) Philip Baker Hall (Roman Krzeminski) Bill Pullman (Dave) Marcus Thomas (Stef Krzeminski) Scott Heindl (James Doyle) Alison Sealy-Smith (Doris Rainford) Aron Tager (Walter Fitzgerald)

While drying out on the West Coast, an alcoholic hitman befriends a tart-tongued woman who might just come in handy when it's time for him to return to Buffalo and settle some old scores.

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You Kill Me

The “hit man comedy” emerged as a genre almost without anybody really noticing it. But looking back at titles like Grosse Point Blank , Prizzi’s Honor , Analyze This , The Matador , The Whole Nine Yards , and many, many others, the trend of us laughing at guys who whack people is nothing new. Director John Dahl has created another worthy entry with the funny hitman gets sober comedy You Kill Me.

Ben Kingsley portrays Frank Falenczyk, chief assassin for the Polish mafia in Buffalo. The Polish mafia in Buffalo is not dominating the market (they supplement their income with a snowplow business), but what little they do control is in danger of being taken over by the Irish outfit led by O’Leary (Dennis Farina). When Frank bungles a hit on O’Leary due to his constant drinking, his boss (and uncle) Roman (Phillip Baker Hall) orders him to San Francisco to dry out. Frank needs to join AA and get himself together or he is going to be “removed” from his position.

While in San Francisco, Frank’s progress is watched by smarmy real estate agent Dave ( Bill Pullman .) Dave gets Frank a job dressing bodies at a funeral parlor where he meets Laurel (Tea Leoni), there to bury a step-father she doesn’t much like in bowling shoes she stole. When she tells Frank they might not fit and he says he’ll break her step-father’s toes to get them in, it’s love at first sight. She’s a type-A, never take no for an answer gal who spends the movie refusing to let Frank blow the best thing he’s ever had.

Dave also makes sure Frank goes to AA meetings, where he meets gay bridge toll taker Tom ( Luke Wilson ), who becomes his sponsor. Frank doesn’t take to sobriety at first, but eventually he sees the need to quit drinking in order to do the one thing he is good at and enjoys, killing people.

The ability to root for a guy who is trying to kick the bottle so he can murder is the basis for enjoying and laughing with You Kill Me. The script, by Narnia screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely , pushes the boundaries of credulity in the portrayal of Tom and the rest of Frank’s AA group when he honestly explains that he kills people and needs to get sober because it affects his work. You can see the comic battle going on between their revulsion and a desire to support.

The relationship between Frank and Laurel requires even more suspended disbelief. She not only isn’t put off by his profession, she warms to it and supports him in his endeavors. The film's saving grace is the combination of fast witty dialogue with top-notch performances by Kingsley and Leoni. They play their characters as real and straight as possible so the at times absurd plot comes across as even more hilarious. Without tons of flow killing back-story or dialogue on how or why Frank and Laurel act the way they do, humor is allowed to take front and center.

But we all know that a movie about a hit man isn’t any fun unless he actually kills people. So Dahl runs a parallel story with the Kingsley-Leoni relationship showing the decline of the Roman’s Polish group back in Buffalo. Two terrific actors, Hall and Farina, share the screen in a demonstration of one small business putting another slowly out of business. You almost wish Dahl would have directed a companion movie focusing on the mob war between the Poles, Irish, Greeks, Chinese and other groups fighting it out in Buffalo.

The movie is packed with good performers spouting funny dialogue and that’s really all a good comedy needs. Worrying about the plot isn't worth the trouble, since when the next laugh comes around and you'll start to feel a bit nitpicky. If you can roll with it and avoid focusing so much on whether or not the film is realistic, you'll enjoy it. How do you know it’s not real, how many hit men go to your AA meeting?

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You Kill Me

• Action/Adventure , Comedy , Mystery/Suspense

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In Theaters

• Ben Kingsley as Frank Falenczyk; Téa Leoni as Laurel Pearson; Luke Wilson as Tom; Bill Pullman as Dave; Philip Baker Hall as Roman Krzeminski

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Distributor, movie review.

Frank Falenczyk has a problem.

No, no, it’s not his job as a hit man. He’s cool with all that. It’s the drinking that’s getting to him. He swills alcohol like a Formula 1 car swills high-octane gasoline; he can’t even finish shoveling snow from his front porch without taking a few pulls from a vodka bottle.

But when Frank is sent to kill a rival Buffalo, N.Y., crime boss and instead passes out in his car, Frank’s Polish family/crime syndicate decides enough is enough: “All you had to do was kill him!” boss Roman Krzeminski says. If Frank doesn’t kick the habit, Roman says, the family will have to fire him—in more ways than one. So they ship Frank off to San Francisco to get some help.

Dave, a friend of the Krzeminski family, gets Frank an apartment, a job as an undertaker’s assistant, and arranges for him to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings nearby. At first, Frank is nonplussed by it all. He thinks the whole setup is as ludicrous as a presidential debate featuring Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. With Jessica Simpson as moderator. Alcohol’s been a part of Frank’s life for decades: Giving it up would be like booting his best friend.

When Tom, Frank’s AA sponsor, tells Frank that he’s got to want to quit drinking, Frank says, “Part of me does.”

“Which part?” Tom asks.

“A part I don’t like,” Frank says.

But Frank’s attitude takes a turn when he meets Laurel Pearson, a high-powered advertising rep who, outlandishly, takes a shine to the taciturn undertaker. Love is a new thing for the hit man: He never knew there were things to live for outside drinking and killing. Plus, Frank reasons, he’ll be a much better killer if he stops drinking so much. So, with these newfound realizations, Frank makes some eye-popping confessions to practically anyone who’ll listen: His sponsor, his girlfriend, his entire AA group.

“That’s why I’m here,” Frank informs Tom. “So I can get cleaned up and go back to killing people full time.”

Positive Elements

Frank has his issues. But throughout this film you see him experiencing a new world of love and friendship he thought was forbidden for someone like him, and it stirs something deep inside his curmudgeonly soul.

For one thing, he regrets the sloppy way he did his job for so many years: He wasn’t quick, precise and painless enough. “I don’t regret killing them, just killing them badly,” he grimaces. So he sends $50 gift cards to his victims’ families. “There are many rewards that flow from making amends,” he tells Laurel.

OK, so that’s not exactly positive. But in the film’s darkly satirical vein, it is a start, as is Frank’s sudden commitment to honesty. He tells Laurel about his drinking problem on their first date. “It seemed important to start off honest,” he tells her, and for the most part, he holds true to that promise. Frank also cares deeply for his family—crime syndicate though it might be. “I had a choice,” he tells his AA group. “Drinking or them.” A fellow AA’er says she’s glad she battles the condition because it helps her go through life “thankful.”

While Frank falls off the wagon a few times, he shows tenacity in climbing back on. Both Tom and Laurel give Frank the support and, in Laurel’s case, the love he needs to keep going.

[ Spoiler Warning ] In the end, Frank gives up his bloody career. (But he doesn’t stop wearing stocking caps.)

Spiritual Elements

Frank deals with spirituality in his own, twisted way. Belief in God (or a godlike entity) plays an important role in AA programs, but Frank tells Tom that the last time he “saw” God was at his first communion, and that God probably wouldn’t have any interest in someone like him, anyway. Tom tells Frank that his god doesn’t need to be the God—just something big and solid and good. Frank chooses the Golden Gate Bridge as his own deified focal point, and at one point tells it, “God, I could really use a hand now.”

Dave, meanwhile, says that in San Francisco, “a real estate agent is God, and that’s what I am: A real estate agent.” He also snoops through Frank’s apartment and, finding no liquor hidden anywhere, announces that Frank is living like “a Mormon.”

Intoxicated mourners say “God bless you” to Frank for making their dearly departed friend look so good—shortly before they get him drunk and, later, abandon him. Their car has a statue of the Virgin Mary sitting on the dashboard, and a comment is made about attending mass the next day. Frank, Laurel and Tom intentionally mangle the “Serenity Prayer.”

Sexual Content

When Frank and Laurel are “shown” having intimate relations, the only thing viewers can see is their feet, and the camera’s in an adjoining room. Laurel makes (extremely) sly references to erectile dysfunction, necrophilia and anatomical size.

Tom greets Frank by telling him that he comes to AA because it’s a “good place to meet guys.” One of Laurel’s first questions for Frank is whether or not he’s gay. (He’s not.) Frank asks Laurel if she’s pregnant. (She’s not, but the brief conversation devolves into the particulars of how she might become so without having sex.) One AA member talks about how he used to drink it up and sex it up during his partying days. An intoxicated (and elderly) mourner makes a pass at Frank.

We watch as a gangster’s wife shows off a bikini outside a store dressing room.

Violent Content

Frank strips down to his underwear before pulling a gun on a city official, hoping to intimidate him. And he carries out one point-blank shooting at the end of the film. While “practicing” his “killer moves,” he trains Laurel to also be a killer. And both commit heinous acts of violence on an innocent watermelon. Laurel does hold one (real) thug at knifepoint and sequesters two gang members in the trunk of her car.

[ Spoiler Warning ] Roman Krzeminski knocks out one of his family members with the butt of a shotgun, sending him tumbling down a set of stairs. The remainder of the Krzeminski clan is then gunned down in a largely bloodless but noisy and brutal shootout. Rival gang leader Edward O’Leary shoots Roman in the head. The audience sees the murder through Roman’s eyes, with the barrel of the gun pointing directly at the camera.

Crude or Profane Language

The f-word is used more than 20 times and the s-word about 10. Close to 20 other—separate—swear words are used in all, if one includes crude and obscene slang references to male and female genitalia. Variations on the word “a–” are particular favorites of the film’s characters, who also blurt out “Jesus,” “god,” “d–n” and “g–d–n.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

You Kill Me is about alcoholism, and alcoholic beverages get almost as much screen time as star Ben Kingsley. In the opening scene, Frank drinks straight from a bottle of vodka. In the climactic showdown boss O’Leary slams down glasses of alcohol as Frank watches, then throws a third tumblerful in Frank’s face. In between we see numerous scenes containing numerous characters drinking or drunk.

But the film doesn’t laugh at “happy drunks.” Rather, booze is the primary villain, and characters under its sway are shown, without exception, at their worst. When Frank breaks his newfound sobriety the first time, he misses dinner with Laurel, wrecks a minivan and winds up facedown on the street in the rain. The second time it happens, an equally inebriated Dave walks up to him and—from the bottom of his heart—calls him a “loser.”

Eventually, we see Frank receive a one-year sobriety pin from AA. His voice cracks when he comes to the podium and says, “My name’s Frank, and I’m an alcoholic.”

Other Negative Elements

Frank contemplates suicide, climbing over the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge before changing his mind and reversing course.

A few scenes that take place at the funeral home feel disrespectful. A dead man’s feet are broken so they’ll fit in a pair of stolen bowling shoes, for instance, because Laurel can’t find his own favorite pair of shoes.

Frank’s gangland family is of Polish descent, and there are occasional references to “Polacks” throughout. But Poles get off easy compared to the city of Buffalo itself, which becomes the subject of several toss-away jokes. “Drinking is a pretty obvious thing to do in Buffalo,” Frank says dryly. Fans of New York’s “other” city should be duly warned!

You Kill Me is a smartly self-aware gangland comedy/thriller with spot-on performances and a nearly gentle heart. The comedy is so quirky and subversive that if you didn’t know you were watching a comedy, you still wouldn’t know a half-hour in. Ben Kingsley, meanwhile, is so good at disappearing into Frank that if you didn’t know Kingsley was starring, you might actually leave the theater still wondering who played that craggy-faced drunk guy.

As the R rating would suggest, the film has some pretty serious content issues. Violence is rare but real and sometimes brutal. Swearing is pervasive. And, of course, the literal takeaway moral is backhanded at best: Drinking is bad, the story says. Killing, not so much. Our hero is a hit man, and no apologies are made for that.

But You Kill Me doesn’t so much glorify, or even accept, Frank’s career choice as much as it uses it as a vehicle into the ludicrous. You Kill Me is satire: It reminded me more of Cary Grant’s classic 1940s comedy Arsenic and Old Lace (wherein Grant’s eccentric aunts do their house guests the “favor” of poisoning them) than the modern, bloody, shoot-’em-up gangster flick. But while Arsenic was a slapstick lark, You Kill Me attempts to use its dark sense of humor to savage a real problem—alcoholism—ending up squarely on the side of sobriety.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Review: you kill me.

You Kill Me doesn’t hold up to great scrutiny, so its best taken in a cable-movie kind of way.

There’s a lot to be said for those directors who happily keep things on a workmanlike B-movie level without sacrificing what made them proud B-directors in the first place. Some claim to do such, but really they can’t wait to direct the next installment of some cinematically bankrupt Hollywood franchise. Even when he’s worked with escalated budgets, John Dahl has retained his playful noir side. Movies like Red Rock West and The Last Seduction deservedly offered him a career, but even if you examine something as seemingly routine as the Paul Walker thriller Joy Ride from years back, there is clear-cut style there, making it not a Paul Walker vehicle but a John Dahl one. His latest, the eclectic, often hilarious You Kill Me , may star an Oscar winner but its roots are firmly planted in the Dahl aesthetic.

Ben Kingsley plays Frank Falenczyk, a hitman and drunk from Buffalo who blows a major gig, and is summoned to San Francisco, where the fuckup takes up 12-stepping as an AA walk-in and books civilian time at a funeral home, where the corpses are only slightly less dead than his persona. Things brighten up when the steely, exec-attired Laurel (Tea Leoni, finally reacquainting herself with her blissfully dry comic side) takes a shine to him, and eventually the two are sharing a bed, followed by secrets, then followed by her all-too-willing participation in his real day job, which helps greatly when the Mafia foes start a war. (This is the type of picture where a sweet-couples montage is set to the duo inventively slicing watermelons for target practice.)

Like most of Dahl’s films, You Kill Me doesn’t hold up to great scrutiny, so its best taken in a cable-movie kind of way. For this film’s brisk, wry 92 minutes, it has a certain economy that only a secure director can accomplish, not to mention a raucous, profanity-strewn screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely that seems ripe for pothead quotables someday. It’s filled with fun little around-the-edges performances too, like Philip Baker Hall’s aging, over-it mobster, and Bill Pullman’s jowl-jawed vulgarian trail-man (though the movie never really finds a satisfactory use for Frank’s affable, gay AA pal played by Luke Wilson). And unlike most “small” movies these days, You Kill Me seems perfectly in sync with its smallness, as any illusion of bloat would have sank the movie’s off-kilter sense of humor. And Kingsley and Leoni are an inspired pair of sad-sacks, the former’s severity given a buoyant, much-needed kick in the pants, and the latter a brazen delight, her best performance since her vixenish turn as Ben Stiller’s possible marital stray in David O. Russell’s benchmark Flirting With Disaster . The movie may not always kill per the title, but these two sure do, in every way you can interpret that statement.

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Jason Clark is an entertainment junkie working as an awards reporter. He is the king of working musical revivals and well-versed in night terrors. He also likes anchovies.

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‘Why Did You Kill Me?’ Review: To Catfish a Killer

In this Netflix true crime documentary, murder meets Myspace.

By Calum Marsh

“Why Did You Kill Me?” tells the story of a terrible and arbitrary killing: the death of a young woman named Crystal Theobald in Riverside, California, who was shot when a member of a neighborhood gang opened fire on her car. Theobald had no connection whatsoever to her killer, and indeed the murder seemed so random that investigators didn’t initially know how to proceed with the case.

Theobald’s death was tragic. But the circumstances were not exactly sensational, or even particularly unique — a pretty meager basis, in other words, for a feature length true crime documentary, where the compelling details of a case are its entire appeal. “Why Did You Kill Me?” ( streaming on Netflix ) seizes on the one intriguing wrinkle to be found: the efforts of Belinda Lane, Crystal’s mother, to solve the murder herself, by creating a fake profile on the social media site Myspace and befriending possible suspects.

The director, Fredrick Munk, dramatizes Belinda’s true-crime catfishing by showing us Myspace from the desktop-POV style of films like the thriller “Searching” and the horror movie “Unfriended.” But these virtual recreations, as well as Munk’s use of handcrafted miniatures and a pulsing electronic score that takes cues from Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive,” feel like vain attempts to invigorate limp material.

Munk avoids grappling with anything serious or difficult — for instance, the socio-economic factors that produce these kinds of killings in the first place. Instead, the movie fixates on the case’s one novelty, its tangential connection to an outdated social media site. Just because a crime is true doesn’t mean it’s interesting. And as “Why Did You Kill Me?” makes clear, without substance, a dash of style won’t do.

Why Did You Kill Me? Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Watch on Netflix.

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Why did you kill me, common sense media reviewers.

Mom tracks daughter's killer; violence, language, drugs

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Tragedy brought someone to do "the right thing for

Belinda is a highly flawed parent who shrugged off

A young woman is shot and killed through the windo

"F--k," "s--t," " "bitch," and "sucks."

Meth addiction and illegal drug dealing are part o

Parents need to know that Why Did You Kill Me? Is a true-crime documentary about a mother who uses the social media app MySpace to find and entrap gang members who played a role in her innocent daughter's murder. The filmmakers go to lengths to present viewpoints of all the players, including police and the…

Positive Messages

Tragedy brought someone to do "the right thing for the first time" in her life. "Justice and revenge, they are just about the same thing."

Positive Role Models

Belinda is a highly flawed parent who shrugged off her sons' criminal activity and herself dealt drugs to support an addiction. She relentlessly pursues an investigation of gang members who murdered her daughter, then admits the role her own behavior played in the tragic events that left her mourning the loss of her beloved daughter. This leads her to become more forgiving of others.

Violence & Scariness

A young woman is shot and killed through the window of an SUV by a gang member for no apparent reason. Numerous people involved have violent pasts. Gang members threaten outsiders and members with murder. A turncoat gang member's family's home is burned to the ground by vengeful gang members. Belinda's methodical and manipulative impersonation online underscores the dangers of befriending strangers on the internet. A woman threatens to kill the person who murdered her daughter.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Meth addiction and illegal drug dealing are part of the story.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Why Did You Kill Me? Is a true-crime documentary about a mother who uses the social media app MySpace to find and entrap gang members who played a role in her innocent daughter's murder. The filmmakers go to lengths to present viewpoints of all the players, including police and the perpetrators themselves. Meth addiction and illegal drug dealing are part of the story. Language includes frequent use of "f--k," "s--t," "bitch," and "sucks." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

WHY DID YOU KILL ME? focuses on events one night in 2006 in California, when Crystal Theobald was 24, a lovely, decent young woman who stepped into her brother's SUV, drove a few blocks from the family home, and was shot in the head for no apparent reason. Her mother, Belinda, knew in her bones it was gang-related, but as a former meth addict who went to prison for possession, she had little use for the police investigating the case. Her sons also had records, and one was in a gang. This sordid family past muddied the investigation for the police but sent Belinda and her determined young niece Jaimie to track down the gang members they believed were responsible by posing as a beautiful girl named Angel on MySpace. Jaimie decided to make at least one member who she believed was on the scene the night Crystal was killed fall in love with her alter-ego, represented online with a demure picture of the beautiful Crystal herself. The ruse takes an emotional toll on the sympathetic Jaimie but it gets startling results, identifying persons of interest and leading the police to hunt down and interrogate gang members who were at the scene of the crime and could describe the night's horrific and senseless events. When Jaimie quits the Angel impersonation to preserve her mental health, Belinda takes over, with her rage, sorrow, and desire for revenge motivating factors. Belinda admits to the camera that she felt responsible for her daughter's death to some degree, a moment the film handles beautifully. When the killer is apprehended and Belinda takes responsibility for her role, she asks the state to take the death penalty off the table in a moment of compassion. The film also interviews gang members, who, without excusing the bad acts they committed, try to explain how they became gang members. Family members weigh in with another side of the story of economic deprivation and lack of education and opportunity, which makes it clear that gang members are also victims of social and financial circumstances.

Is It Any Good?

True-crime fans will find a lot to discuss and ponder. Why Did You Kill Me? takes a complex set of facts -- a random murder; California gangs and the socio-economic hardships that create them; a blameless victim from a family with its own history of felons and drug abusers -- and demonstrates the ingenuity of relatives who track down the killer when the trail goes cold for the police. Given all the tangents, director Frederick Munk wrangles this unwieldy story into a cogent and dramatically absorbing narrative. Lay "detectives" using the internet and social media to perform their own productive crime investigations have been chronicled in other movies, but this one shows that dogged determination can take highly motivated people to places the police might not go. Without being preachy, the documentary raises reasonable questions about the inevitability of gang violence where society provides few alternative, law-abiding paths to struggling young people.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about why Belinda and the rest of her family weren't interested in helping the police find Crystal's murderer. How did information about Belinda and her sons' felony convictions alter your opinion of the Theobald family and the possible reasons for Crystal's murder?

The Theobalds used "catfishing," or posing as someone else on the internet, to catch a murderer. What does their method tell you about how easy it would be for someone with criminal intentions to catfish innocent people online? Have you ever befriended a stranger online? Would you do it again after seeing this movie?

Belinda believed that no one, not even the police, cared as much as she did about finding her daughter's killer. Do you think her zeal and efforts demonstrated that caring can sometimes out-sleuth professional police work? Why or why not?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : April 14, 2021
• Director : Frederick Munk
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Documentary
• Character Strengths : Perseverance
• Run time : 83 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : February 17, 2023

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Tell Them You Love Me Review: A Haunting Doc About Crime and Consent

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• Tell Them You Love Me is an unbiased documentary that challenges viewers to question their assumptions about consent, disability, and communication.
• The film is told in a very focused way, which might leave out some details, but gets to the heart of the true crime story of Anna Stubblefield and Derrick Johnson.
• Tell Them You Love Me is an ethically complicated film that leaves viewers with complex moral questions about communication and consent in relationships.

Beginning all the way back with Making a Murderer and even more so the past year or two, Netflix has become a behemoth of true crime documentaries lately, with new movies and especially docuseries dominating the zeitgeist seemingly every month. These titles often rise up to the top 10 most-watched lists, sparking even further interest in a feedback loop of crime and curiosity. American Nightmare, What Jennifer Did, Don't F**k with Cats, Can I Tell You a Secret, Dancing for the Devil, Lover, Stalker Killer — these are just a handful of documentaries that have become the new watercooler topics in pop culture over the past year. The latest is the film Tell Them You Love Me , but it's a very different addition.

Originally produced for Sky and executive produced by documentary master Louis Theroux and his production company Mindhouse, Nick August-Perna's Tell Them You Love Me is ostensibly a true crime drama about the sexual abuse of a non-verbal man with cerebral palsy. However, the film is told in such an unbiased and intellectually curious way that you may start to question your presuppositions about things like consent, rape, disability, communication, and power, and realize that they can be disarmingly ambiguous. That's the master stroke of Tell Them You Love Me , a film which turns on a tap in your mind and leaves you thinking about it for days with every haunting drip, drip, drip.

When Communication Becomes a Crime

Tell Them You Love Me

A documentary about an academic and professor who specializes in disability and facilitated communication who falls in love with a severely disabled man, and the legal trouble that follows.

• An ethically complicated film that will leave you thinking for days.
• Simple and unbiased filmmaking creates a complete portrait of the situation and everyone involved.
• There's great sympathy and understanding conveyed in the film.
• The film could've explored the legal aspect a bit more.

Tell Them You Love Me primarily follows the Johnson family — Derrick, a disabled Black man with cerebral palsy; his brother, John, who now has a Ph.D. from Rutgers University-Newark and is an assistant professor of history at St. Peter's University; and Daisy, a single mother who raised John and Derrick, and continues to take care of the latter. While John was studying at Rutgers, he met professor Anna Stubblefield, a kind and helpful academic with an interest in disability studies, the intersectionality of disability, race, gender, and class, and the alternative medicine technique of facilitated communication.

It was that method, facilitated communication (or FC), which lit a fuse in John's mind. The technique purports to allow non-verbal people with disabilities to communicate with the help of a facilitator, who would guide their hand or arm to allow them to write or type. The good intentions of FC met Stubblefield's preconceived notion of disability — that just because someone is non-verbal does not mean that they are unintelligent; that people with disabilities have independent minds and can become empowered through FC.

Unfortunately, FC has become discredited in the scientific community, with people suggesting that any communication which results from the technique is simply a projection of the facilitator. It's essentially the same way people debunk Ouija boards — even if you're unconscious of doing so, you will guide your or others' hand to spell out something you want to say.

This is why, when Derrick began wooing Anna with romantic writing and initiated a sexual relationship with her, John and Daisy Johnson believed that Anna was fabricating everything Derrick said. A court ultimately agreed, and Stubblefield was charged with two counts of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

The Top Two Movies on Netflix Look at Sex & Consent in Very Different Ways

Fifty Shades of Grey and Tell Them You Love Me are the top two movies on Netflix, and both reflect the complexity of consent and sexuality.

An Unbiased Film Where the True Crime Isn't So Clear-Cut

Nick August-Perna's film never sensationalizes anything, straying from any graphics, noticeable score, dramatic edits, or reenactments. It's a quiet film that will sometimes let scenes play out without any commentary, focusing on Daisy getting Derrick out of bed, or on Anna bringing the trash can in from the street. The film doesn't plaster an opinion across its narrative, and doesn't emotionally manipulate you into forming any specific opinions; you feel sorrow for and develop some understanding of everyone involved.

Tell Them You Love Me presents the details from multiple different parties, with an appropriate amount of outside commentary. The best is from Devva Kasnitz, an adjunct professor of Disability Studies at CUNY and a disabled anthropologist. Kasnitz knew Anna and understands the world of disability, and provides fascinating and almost poetic commentary at times.

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The film is swift, a welcome break from the multipart documentaries that generally do well on Netflix. It could've delved further into Anna's life and childhood, and discussed more about John and Daisy, but the direct focus on the 'crime' itself keeps the movie grounded and moving quickly, and prevents any emotional attachment to one party over the other. The fact that Stubblefield won an appeal and was released from prison only complicates things further. Tell Them You Love Me probably would've benefited from a deeper exploration of the legality of everything, and Stubblefield's journey through the justice system and prison, but again, the runtime keeps things unbiased.

Tell Them You Love Me Is a Mystery That Leaves You with Many Questions

Ultimately, Tell Them You Love Me is a mystery. At the heart of this mystery is Derrick Johnson, who was either the victim of rape or a disabled man who wanted a relationship. The unanswerable ambivalence is found in the fact that we can't know what Derrick was thinking, or if he was even thinking. He cannot communicate and tell us, and so everyone around him is projecting a bit of themselves onto him. Perhaps Daisy and John were being too protective; perhaps Anna was deluding herself. Derrick becomes the Lacanian 'Real' in Tell Them You Love Me , or a cypher we can't decrypt.

Best True Crime Documentaries on Netflix to Watch Right Now

With a colorful mix of feature films and limited series documentaries, Netflix has pretty much reinvented the true crime genre and has crushed its competition for the later half of the past decade.

And so we are left with questions. Can someone who cannot communicate ever actually consent to sex? Are we denying someone their humanity if we remove the possibility of consent from their lexicon? Does personhood depend upon the ability to communicate? Was there a power imbalance here? And if so, would a power balance fix anything — can two non-verbal people have consensual sex? Can two severely disabled people who want to have sex do so without it being ethically compromised?

These are the kinds of questions that may plague your mind after watching Tell Them You Love Me. They don't seem to haunt Anna Stubblefield, who seems to still think Derrick loved her and initiated a romantic relationship; her mother agrees. When the filmmaker asks Derrick's mother, Daisy, "Do you think she believed that he was typing?" she responds by saying, "Yeah, in her wicked mind." If Anna believes it, even after serving two years in prison, then one imagines she sleeps well. After watching Tell Them You Love Me , you might not.

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