He Was a Quiet Man (2007)

Lack of good storyline.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

I cannot tell you the plot of this movie. I am uncertain what happened, and if I told you a version, you would likely not believe me.Christian Slater plays Bob Maconel, a mousy, picked-on middle aged man. He hallucinates that his goldfish talk to him and bully him. He hallucinates/imagines killing his co-workers.You never know what is his imagination, his hallucination or twists of the screenwriters' mad fantasy.He deals with sadistic bullies for co-workers. One is female, who enjoys coming on to him, then suddenly crying out sexual harassment. I wanted a particularly sticky end for her, but was unsatisfied. Another, the man at the next desk, goes postal.One character is Venessa, a beautiful young woman paralysed from the neck down. She is a self-centred power tripper and tries to force Bob to help her commit suicide. We never know if she can be trusted or if she is just a scheming manipulator who uses Bob as a "spoon" to care for her.You see so many versions of events, you have to put on hold your decision of whether what you just saw was real.The problem with this movie is has no proper protagonist. Bob is just a colourless, mumbling dishrag. It is hard to care one way or the other what happens to him.I thought it odd that no one asked Bob why he had a loaded gun in his desk at the office, with which he shot the worker who went postal. Perhaps in the USA this is common. The only question was why he did not shoot sooner.Venessa explained the clasp on her bra to Bob, her caregiver, who had to bathe, bum wipe and spoon feed for the last few months. Surely by now he would already thoroughly understand female clothing.Much of the plot is Pythonesque. Bizarre things happen and everyone keeps a perfectly straight face and pretends they are ordinary.One amusing scene is Venessa ordering Bob around commanding him not to be "weak" not to let people push him around.The movie just seemed to meander after a shotgun start. I lost interest about half way through.

"He Was a Quiet Man" is a poor attempt at black comedy from director Frank Cappello. The film stars Christian Slater as a white-collar worker who fantasises about murdering his boss and co-workers.Whilst "Man" contains a relatively clever narrative structure, and two good, darkly comedic moments (one in which a paralysed woman sings at a karaoke bar, another in which Slater's murder spree is interrupted by another co-worker's murder spree), the film is ultimately amateurishly directed, thin and poorly written.5/10 – Worth one viewing. See "The Assassionation of Richard Nixon", Fassbiner's "The Third Generation", "Taxi Driver", Lindsay Anderson's "If" and "Office Space" instead.

With a truly creative story and a couple of engaging and image-busting performances, He Was a Quiet Man is a welcome relief from so many films that aren't nearly as clever as they think they are. I can honestly say that this movie kept surprising me with its plot twists and emotional sincerity. Writer-director Frank A. Cappello supplements his neat script with some striking imagery and lassos outstanding performances from his two leads. It's deliberately odd and unlike most motion pictures, it's must better in the middle than the beginning or the end, but this is a fine and almost exceptional piece of work.Bob Maconel (Christian Slater) is a balding, near-sighted cubicle drone. His only joys in life are catching a fleeting glimpse of the smile of his beautiful co-worker Vanessa (Elisha Cuthbert), the talking fish in his aquarium that his delusional mind has cooked up and his violent thoughts about launching a murder spree in the office. Bob is pretty much the perfect example of the isolated, barely functional guy whose rage at the world builds and builds until it finally explodes. But when the day comes and bullets start flying and bodies start falling at Bob's workplace, he's not the one doing the shooting. Some other angrily lonely loser goes on a rampage and Bob goes from office freak and whipping boy to office hero when he blows the killer away, no one realizing that Bob brought a gun to work so HE could kill everyone. What happens after that is something you should experience for yourself.I wasn't sure about this film at the start. It seemed very obvious what it was about and where it would be going, to the point where it seemed to be trying to hard. There's a point where a couple of Bob's co-workers torment him like they were all still in middle school that's transparently fake and manipulative. But I never expected someone else to go kill-crazy at Bob's office and never imagined how he'd react to that or any of the stuff that would follow. Cappello does an excellent job of setting up a story that can really only go in one direction and, with a single crazily believable twist, sends it soaring off somewhere else. It's the sort of moment that every storyteller aspires to and he nails it.Christian Slater is committed and unflinching as Bob. He's playing a screwed up loser and there's never a second in the movie where he abandons or ignores that essence. Even when he's trying to help the audience understand and empathize with what the character is feeling and needing, Slater never lets you forget that Bob has serious problems that will ultimately doom him.Yet while Slater's superb acting gets most of the spotlight, Elisha Cuthbert is calmly amazing. Most folks probably know her as Jack Bauer's daughter from 24 and I saw her name in the opening credits, but I actually forgot it was her while I was watching the film. She starts out playing Bob's fantasy, evolves into a harsh reality and then transcends that into a new existence. There's a scene that highlights a reality of life for people with severe disabilities that's at first squirmingly uncomfortable to watch, but Cuthbert draws you in and transfixes with the human dignity of her character. You stop reacting to the situation and you start reacting to her.Now, the ending is a bit contrived, especially after the impressively organic stuff in the middle of the picture. And the movie doesn't appear to appreciate the difference between a man who's crushingly unhappy and a guy who's insane, which produces a few moments where you can't be sure that the film is sure of what it's doing. Those are minor kvetches, however.He Was a Quiet Man is enjoyable and perversely charming. Everybody involved should be proud of what they made.

SPOILER ABOUT BASIC PREMISE OF MOVIE - The concept here is beautiful: social misfit #1 is driven to the edge of homicidal rage in his workplace but is beaten the punch by co-worker misfit #2, and becomes somewhat of an accidental hero by offing #2 using the bullets that had been intended for other co-workers. I would love to see what the Coen Brothers or perhaps Scorsese could have done with this brilliant premise. Unfortunately, in the hands of the actual writer-director this was a disaster. I had to keep suppressing my gag reflex at the leaden dialogue, cardboard cutout characterizations, etc. I'm mystified by high ratings for this movie - what didn't get a 9 or 10 from those who gave this one? William Macey is one of my favorite actors and I've a softer spot for Christian Slater than many, but this was just painful (it might have been marginally better if they had switched roles but what was really needed was a script overhaul). It is very rare for me to turn off a movie before finishing but about 1/2 way through this one I concluded my evening would be better spent aimlessly surfing the 'net.