Give it a rest

The comma in the Christmas carol title “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” makes all the difference.

With the comma, which is the way it is written, it is a way of wishing happiness to people at Christmastime. Without the comma, which is the way a lot of people think it is supposed to be, it is telling a bunch of folks to go to sleep. Which doesn’t make sense.

Which brings us to the comma-less new film “The Merry Gentleman.” Perhaps the title is supposed to be ironic, because the gentleman in question keeps contemplating suicide. But then he is involved in an understated romance, which is a little bit merry, and before it edges into drama -- with hints of a thriller, plus overplayed and eventually empty religious implications -- it looks like it might try to be a bit of a comedy, though not a very funny one.

In other words, it’s a mess. Tonally, it doesn’t always make sense. And besides, the main character isn’t a man at all, gentle or otherwise.

Kelly Macdonald is absolutely superb as our heroine Kate, the battered wife of a cop. She picks up and moves to Chicago, where she gets a job as a receptionist at a generic company that does nothing specific. Her opposite number is Frank, a profoundly depressed hit man/tailor, who is in no way merry.

Generally, in a movie such as this, the two lonely people will find each other and have a beneficial effect on each other. This is especially true when, as in this case, the woman first appears to the hit man with her arms outstretched like Jesus -- literally, like Jesus -- welcoming him into her arms while he is busy trying to kill someone. At Christmas.

By the end of “The Merry Gentleman,” she has had an effect on him, but it is shown strictly as a metaphor. Anyone looking for something to happen in the story on a literal level, which is basically everyone, will find the ending enormously unsatisfying.

Frank the eternally dour hit man is played by Michael Keaton, who never once opens his mouth to speak for the first half-hour or so. When they first meet face to face, they meet cute; he finds her under a Christmas tree, where she has fallen.

Sounds like a comedy, with an unhappy professional killer falls for an unusual woman, like “You Kill Me,” but not nearly as funny. But then the tone shifts, and it shifts again and again until there is little tone left. Just the sense that there are only three lonely people in Chicago (including a cop played by Tom Bastounes) and they keep running into each other.

Keaton also makes his debut as a director, reportedly stepping in when writer Ron Lazzeretti became ill. Perhaps a more seasoned veteran could have made something fuller from the underfocused script, but Keaton prefers to give his actors as much unspoken face time on camera as they can stand. As a result, the dialogue is marked by long, pained, alienated pauses, even when it should not be. It’s like Harold Pinter writing a romantic comedy.

Sadly, “The Merry Gentleman” is an opportunity missed. It could have been a better movie. It could have been “You Kill Me,” but someone already made that.

It’s just “The Merry, Gentleman.”