The Merry Gentleman

Slick Chicago hitman Frank Logan (Keaton) isn't happy in his work. In fact, he's so miserable he goes to throw himself off an office block minutes after his latest - successful - hit.

However, just as he's about to launch himself he catches the eye of office worker Kate Frazier (McDonald) who may - or may not - have clocked him going about his lethal business.

Anyway, he ends up helping her cart an oversized Christmas tree to her apartment...and then turning up later only to collapse on her doorstep, wheezing like a consumptive.

And so begins an unlikely unrelationship. Taciturn to the point of speechlessness, we get the impression Frank - despite a thriving business - is a very lonely man who's not in the best of health.

Kate is on the run from an abusive relationship at the (all-to-free-flying) hands of her cop husband and is also trying to dodge the advances of Tom Bastounes' detective Murcheson, after he's been assigned to investigate Frank's handiwork.

Both Logan and Murcheson, an alcholic divorcee, are desperate for sympathy and - at a push - affection but Kate, still buffeted by the shockwaves of a traumatic marriage, is not really the shoulder to cry on they are looking for.

Keaton, as director, does a fine job of teasing out the frailties of this damaged threesome while McDonald is pitch-perfect as the runaway whose innate decency holds out some spark of hope.

Tim Evans