He Was a Quiet Man

He Was a Quiet Man

He Was a Quiet Man

Well, so far I have not seen anyone mention the most obvious thing about this fantasy. No it is not a dream, but a fantasy in Bob's twisted mind. Of course there was a massive time warp with the bullet on the floor as a start/end point. But the real trick here is Coleman. People think ! How is Bob's last name spelled ? Maconel . Hello, there was no Coleman. Shuffle the letters of Maconel and you get it...a classic technique of mystery writing using the anagram to wrap up the plot is a great clue to the stories meaning, agree ? I went through a lot of threads and I could not find this but someone else may have figured it out. I was pretty easy once you think about the similarity of the names and how the characters kept finishing each others sentences.

This was the most annoying soundtrack that I have ever heard in my entire life for a movie. The levels are so off that it is completely annoying. I have never seen a movie before where the bass level and mix actually ruins the entire movie. I wanted to cause some one physical harm after the ignorance of the mix of this soundtrack. Can you tell I didn't like it? With how annoying it was... I was not able to continue to watch the movie past the first 10 mins...... Please.... please.... someone fire the person that wrote this score.

This film is not bad visually. It breaks no new ground, but it pulls off some music-video style imagery in a way that fits nicely into the film. Christian Slater's acting is actually pretty good. But the plot stinks. It's the same tired 'this is all a hallucinatory dream sequence in the moment before death' crap that ruins so many films that almost make a statement, and then, at the last minute, confess to being delusions. If nothing past the first fifteen minutes of a film is 'real', and the main character dies at the end of a film with the realization that the things you just saw were all some literature professor's self-referential wet dream of metaphor and allegory, then what is this film worth? The whole thing is pointless. Would have made a fair enough five page short story for a freshman college English class. At a community college. On film, it's just disappointing.

Not awful, not excellent... He Was A Quiet Man is both good and bad and a tough film to write a review of. It contains some interesting ideas, and some interesting sequences; but overall it's effect is deadening and dull. The acting is good, but really leads nowhere. The film is not boring, but it never really lifts off and goes anywhere. It is remarkably gray and dull especially when being surreal. Do I enjoy it? No, not really - it is a film for pessimists - it is about ennui, and fatalism, and even existentialism - but it never quite converts its premise into anything other than ugliness. As I said a tough film to review as it does contain a kernel of a great film, but it fails to be little more than a bizarre tale of modern work gone horribly wrong and the choices we make in desperation. Over to you...

Though it was refreshing to see Christian slater in a role where he wasn't a wise-cracking rebel without a cause, the plot twists felt forced and anti-climatic at best. A missed opportunity to present a somewhat original story line, in a film industry that seem driven by cloning whatever didn't suck at the box office too bad last year. Our above peers love to hang the tag-line "surreal" on every movie with special effects, has a dream sequence, or let's face it, anything that qualifies as introspection these days (yawn). Is it any wonder that the term surreal was on the list of banished words last year. Regardless, don't buy into any hype that your local video store genius tries to sell you on this. It's not Fight Club. It's not Falling Down. It's an OK story full of the usual plot holes that come with the typical rush of film studios just wanting to get something, anything out the door to stay on budget. Even the CGI seemed sub-standard.

"He Was a Quiet Man" is perhaps the most original and unpredictable movie I've ever seen. If you're looking for something "normal", you should probably look elsewhere. A story of an extremely lonely, put-upon, disturbed man who desperately wants to be Somebody. Christian Slater plays this man absolutely brilliantly. In watching his performance, I kept thinking "Where is Christian Slater?" ... Well, he's not even in the neighborhood. Well done, guy! The direction is absolutely amazing: colorful, imaginative, darkly funny, and surreal. Cubicles, and hummingbirds, and talking fish, oh my! While the film is not particularly emotionally satisfying (to say the least), on the cerebral and aesthetic level, it delivers big time. "He Was a Quiet Man" answers the musical question: "Now maniacs will think twice before going crazy." Yessiree.

In Los Angeles, the lonely and paranoid Bob Maconel (Christian Slater) is a complete loser: at home, in spite of living in the same address for five years, his next door neighbor ignores his existence and he only talks to his alter-ego golden fish in his aquarium; in the office at ADD company, he is abused and humiliated by his colleagues and nobody has ever asked an opinion to him or invited him to a happy-hour. Every now and then Bob imagines shooting five loath coworkers or blowing up ADD's building. When his next cubicle colleague has a breakdown and shoots his colleagues, Bob kills him with five shots and becomes a popular local hero. His boss Gene Shelby (William H. Macy) moves him from his cubicle to an office in the last floor and makes him the VP of Creative Thinking as the substitute for Vanessa Parks (Elisha Cuthbert), who has become quadriplegic with one bullet in her spine. Bob visits Vanessa in the hospital and after the initial rejection, she asks him to help her to commit suicide. However, they become close and Bob falls in love for Vanessa. But the mistreatment in the past and lack of confidence of the quiet Bob haunt him, driving him to an insanity process. "He Was a Quiet Man" is an impressively dark and morbid character study of a paranoid man after years of humiliation and loneliness. Most of the characters in the office are usually found in most companies, from the sweet woman that uses sex to climb positions to the apple-polisher; the abusive to the abused worker. Therefore, there is a total credibility in the universe of the employees of ADD. The underrated Christian Slater gives a fantastic performance with the quiet and ignored Bob Maconel and his character is very well developed, slightly recalling Michael Douglas in "Falling Down". The extremely dark humor may be unpleasant to some viewers but I found this movie a gem to be discovered. My vote is eight. Title (Brazil): "A Fúria" ("The Rage")