Kill Me Three Times

Simon Pegg stars in this crime caper as Charlie Wolfe, a British hit man with a handlebar mustache, although the film's true star is Brazilian actress Alice Braga, as Alice, a waitress at a seaside bar who appears to die in each of the movie's three interlocking chapters. In the first, Perth dentist Nathan (Sullivan Stapleton) and his wife/assistant, Lucy (Teresa Palmer), kidnap Alice in order to pay off Nathan's gambling debts. In the second, Lucy encourages her bar owner brother, Jack (Callan Mulvey), to hire Charlie to bump off Jack's wife, Alice, who has been having an affair with Dylan (Luke Hemsworth). The two strands come together in the third as debtors and debt collectors collide, including an on-the-take police officer (Bryan Brown). Director Kriv Stenders's Kill Me Three Times is, unfortunately, not quite as clever as it thinks it is, but it does provide a fine platform for Braga, whose character feels like the only one that could actually exist outside the confines of the puzzle-piece structure. A strong optional purchase. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include two audio commentaries (the first with director Kriv Stenders and cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson; the second with Stenders and producers Laurence Malkin, Share Stallings, and Tania Chambers), a “making-of” featurette (18 min.), a Q&A with star Simon Pegg and the producers (14 min.), storyboards (5 min.), a deleted scene (3 min.), and photo and poster galleries. Bottom line: a solid extras package for an uneven film.] (K. Fennessy)