He Was a Quiet Man

[KLAXXON]

A normal guy is thrust into action by extraordinary circumstances. His heroics bring him into close contact with a woman injured during the recent crisis, and she gives him something to think about.


He was, said a neighbor, a quiet man. He kept to himself, said another. No one knew him well. He lived in a nondescript house with a yard that wasn't as nicely trimmed as those bordering it, and he went off to work every day in his short-sleeved dress shirts and mousy glasses, carrying a sad little lunch that he always ate alone. In an ill-lit cubicle, he crunched meaningless numbers all day and nurtured a silent crush on a co-worker with a pretty smile, to whom he never dared to speak and who didn't know his name. He was mocked by a few, and a friend to no one. Nobody knew that in his desk was a loaded gun.

It's a familiar story; one we sometimes read in newspapers after a workplace shooting, and in Frank A. Cappello's film — which won best feature at Seattle's True Independent Film Festival last summer — it gets just a bit of a spin. Bob Maconel (Christian Slater) is the greasy-haired misfit at its center, toiling in the sort of workplace "Office Space" sent up so well. (The name of the slickly generic company — we're never told exactly what sort of work anyone is doing — is A.D.D.) So anonymous he parks in a space labeled "Other," Bob's dreary life is quickly established, with his finger rubbing on the gun he hopes to use on his co-workers. And then, 10 minutes into the movie, somebody else decides to embark on a killing spree at the office, and Bob — too slow to the trigger — becomes the most unlikely of heroes.

This sounds darkly funny, and I suspect with the right audience "He Was a Quiet Man" might well play as black comedy. But Slater, disappearing into his role, brings a note of earnest desperation to his performance that's hard to laugh at, and hard to look away from.

The film becomes a strange love story, as Bob connects with his now-disabled co-worker (Elisha Cuthbert) and finds a shaky confidence at work, championed by his smarmy new boss (William H. Macy). A not-unexpected twist at the end brings the story around full circle; we never know, it turns out, what quiet men are thinking.









Timid office shooter Bob Maconel (Christian Slater) has his pistol loaded and his targets picked out. The only thing he's missing is the guts to reclaim his manhood from the daily snips to his ego from his domineering supervisor (Jamison Jones) and femme fatale coworker (Sascha Knopf) that have left him, as he calls it, castrated. He's even out-alphaed by co-star William H. Macy and his chastising pet goldfish, who may or may not be a sign of schizophrenia. (They are near doppelgangers with matching myopia, baldness and a constant feeling of being trapped under surveillance.) Yet before he can pull his trigger, another gunman (David Wells) beats him to the draw and Bob is hailed as a hero, even though he knows the only reason he's alive is because the murderer thought he was too pitiful to kill.


With its dreamlike flourishes and unrelenting despair, Frank A. Cappello's pitch-black dramedy feels distinctive even if it recalls bits from Falling Down, Office Space (Slater's channeling Milton in his downtrodden drag) and even Boxing Helena as Bob becomes the caretaker of the paralyzed, once-backstabbing office hottie (Elisha Cuthbert) only to become paranoid that the only reason she's offering to blow him is because no one else will have her. (Their first and only love scene, however, is movingly intimate.)


Cappello can set a mood; after torturing his characters, however, he's just not sure what to do with them. But while the ending feels like a powerful cheat, at the least you'll walk away determined to save that extra donut for the office recluse.










Christian Slater ...  Bob Maconel
John Gulager ...  Goldie / Maurice Gregory
Elisha Cuthbert ...  Vanessa Parks
Jamison Jones ...  Scott Harper
Michael DeLuise ...  Detective Soreson
Sascha Knopf ...  Paula Metzler
Cristina Lawson ...  Nancy Felt (as Anzu Lawson)
K.C. Ramsey ...  Jackson
David Wells ...  Ralf Coleman
Randolph Mantooth ...  Dr. Willis
Frankie Thorn ...  Jessica Light (as Frankie Lou Thorn)
Sewell Whitney ...  Derrick Miles
Lisa Arianna ...  ADD Assistant
Livia Treviño ...  Shelby's Secretary (as Levia Trevino)
Tina D'Marco ...  Nurse




IMDB





Download Torrent