He Was a Quiet Man

Christian Slater is almost unrecognisable as Bob Maconel, a man who plans on going postal, and seems to have been planning it for some time. Every day he imagines himself blowing up the building and every day he loads his revolver with the intent to go through and every day he returns home and his goldfish calls him a chicken.

One day, as he's loading his gun, his coworker goes postal ahead of him, and by gunning him down, Bob is suddenly held up as a hero by the people who's names were all but on the bullets with which he saved their lives.

It's a hell of a premise. It would probably make a hell of a black comedy. Unfortunately He Was a Quiet Man is an incredibly bleak and serious drama. It makes occasional hints at it's comic potential, like the business with the fish, but they seem to simply be further elements of the torturous nature of Bob's world.

Much of the film is concerned with his relationship with Elisha Cuthbert's character, a corporate climber who was left paraplegic in the aftermath of the shooting. Caring for the former object of his office crush becomes the one true ray of sun in Bob's grey life, but even this eventually becomes further fodder for his cavernous insecurities.

It's just relentless, even after he's crossed that crucial threshold, been the man at the edge fighting back, which makes films such as Office Space and American Beauty so delightful, he's still trapped in a grim, meaningless existence, merely a few floors higher up, and it's not long before he's back to his cubical with a gun in his hand; His self destruction only prolonged.

At around 80 minutes longer than it should have been, I'm not sure what the film's point was. Unless it was that railing against the system is a futile maneuver, in which case it's not one I cared to hear.