Hit Me

Hit Me is a 1996 American crime film directed by Steven Shainberg starring Elias Koteas, Laure Marsac, and William H. Macy. The film is based on the novel A Swell-Looking Babe by Jim Thompson. Plot Sonny lives with his intellectually disabled older brother Leroy and works as a bellhop in a hotel, struggling to pay back a loan to Jack Cougar, the head of hotel security. Sonny is attracted to Monique, a hotel guest who says she is from Paris and slits her wrists in front of him as a cry for help. He is warned not to have sex with the guests because the hotel manager Mr. Stillwell wishes to run a respectable business and regain the third star that the hotel has lost, yet Monique continually tempts him aggressively. After he relents and has sex with her, she suddenly stands up and begins screaming. Sonny punches her out in a panic and flees the room. Del, a former bellhop now working for local gangster Lenny Ish and staying in the room next to Monique, tells Sonny that he will take care of the situation. Sonny sees Del and Cougar forcibly removing Monique from the hotel and tells Del that he does not want her to be killed by Cougar. Del says that she could be paid to keep quiet for $5,000 and invites Sonny to take part in a heist of Lenny Ish's high-stakes poker game at the hotel, promising to give Lenny 10% of the total haul of $700,000. Monique visits Sonny one night and confesses that she is actually from Montreal, was hired by Del to be a hostess at the poker game, and was then hired to seduce Sonny and scream that it was rape in order to force him into participating in the heist. The heist takes place the Tuesday night before the Wednesday poker game. Cougar takes the keys to the hotel safety deposit boxes from the poker players at gunpoint. The other two bellhops, Bascomb and Billy, are supposed to take a break to eat and leave Sonny alone at this time but have decided to just eat at the front desk instead. Del arrives and forces Bascomb to hand the stolen keys to Sonny but during the handover the keys are dropped and mixed up. Bascomb and Sonny hurriedly try the forty keys in each of the forty lock boxes. Sonny closes the security door and locks himself and Bascomb in the lock box room. Billy attempts to talk Del and Cougar out of the heist but is shot dead by Cougar. Cougar shoots Bascomb through the mail slot in the door then pushes the gun through it and tells Sonny to finish him off as he and Del leave the hotel.