He Was a Quiet Man: drama, 2007

Mind-fuck films are truly awesome when done well. It’s a description, rather than a genre, as there are examples in everything from horror to comedy to drama, but they are most often found in thrillers. It’s that feeling of forcing the brain to wrap around something spun of pure trickery, with nobody in the drivers seat. Its the suspicion of having your mind used by the filmmaker, but in a way that keeps circling the outskirts of your thinking long after you close your eyes for the night. Think Memento. Or Brazil. Or He Was a Quiet Man.

The biggest problem with a good mental mind-fuck is that it’s often difficult to review without sacrificing many of those elements. So often the plot is a mental puzzle solved at the end, with each piece an important part.

He Was a Quiet Man is one of those –a story told so compellingly its still being mentally reviewed days later. To opine correctly is also to skirt around a number of plot items that, if revealed, could spoil the entire experience. If I could get away with describing it as a mind-bendingly dark treatment Office Space crossed with Walter Mitty, I would leave it at that.

Bob Maconel (Christian Slater) is a frayed-at-the-seams office worker, with a mind-numbingly dull job. It’s clear from his unkempt and bookish ways that his was the lunch that became the daily game of “keep away” in elementary school, a game still gleefully played by Bob’s middle management at work.

Bob is first seen in his cubicle, thinking about each of his intended victims while loading their bullet into his pistol. Moments before he takes action, his boss interrupts him with work.

At home, Bob keeps a tank of goldfish. One of them speaks to him, needling him for not successfully blowing the office away, which Bob counters with the observant “then I would not be here to feed you.” He spends his time at home painting figures on match-heads. At work, he eats lunch outside, presssing a red button on a black box. In his mind, it blows up the building. He is a self-lighting tinderbox.

It seems the only thing at work that gives Bob any joy is Vanessa (Elisha Cuthpert), an executive assistant kind enough to compliment the tchotchke hula dancer on his monitor. Her passing is like a fresh breeze, and he drinks in her brief presence like cooling water on a blistering day.

That afternoon, he goes through his ritual again of naming his intended victims while loading the pistol, but he drops the last bullet, the one meant for himself, to the floor.

To further discuss the plot from there would be a disservice to anyone who wants to see this film – and it’s is a movie worth watching for the details alone. The performances are, on the whole, excellent. Slater and Cuthpert both shine – Bob is the nerdy and inappropriate introvert who is thrust into the hero spotlight, and Vanessa the office beauty, struck down and paralyzed by a bullet. They play off each other with an intensity that adds to every scene – whether she is cursing him for keeping her alive, or caught in an awkward moment of intimacy. Although more “black” than “comedy”, Cuthpert lets her chops steal a few laughs where the script lets her. William Macy does an excellent turn as the company CEO.

The body of the film is rich with clues as to what’s really amiss: in the characters, in the dialogue, in set design. The script is inventive and different, successfully tackling the increasingly familiar news story about office shootings with a unique perspective. At times a love story, at times a rag-to-riches tale, and always a story of psychotic break, the tale is told through Bob’s own lying eyes. Slater makes this tragically broken character come alive, regardless the circumstances.

Like so many successful mind-fucks, the end leaves almost as many questions as it answers. We know what the end result is – but what did the journey mean? From the significance to the number of animated hummingbirds, to the glimpses of the refrigerator, we realize that everything we saw has a deliberate significance. The little bits of backstory casually mentioned, the subtleties in the relationship with Vanessa, and the talks with hallucinatory goldfish could be picked apart by a most observant detective to uncover the waiting ending.

But for most of us mere mortals, it just means a second viewing, to see how the tasty morsels all come together to reach the necessary end. Which makes He was a Quiet Man just as fun the second time around.

Rating: 4 of 5 apple juice containers, empty

Pain Level: 2

Medication: 600 mg gabapentin, 400 mg ibuprofen

TO WATCH HE WAS A QUIET MAN ON NETFLIX, CLICK HERE