By J.E.
“He was a quiet man” is something neighbors, coworkers, and acquaintances usually say about a loner-type who they learn has just committed a horrific act. The “quiet man” the guy who suddenly slaughters his family in a fit of rage one night before killing himself as well. It’s the guy who goes on a shooting rampage at work for no particular reason at all. It’s the guy you least expect to do anything of the sort, the one who usually just sits back and accepts everything that people throw his way. Until one day he simply snaps.
The 2007 Frank Cappello film He Was a Quiet Man explores this theme by giving viewers a glimpse into the mind of one such person. It’s a complex, interesting journey that reveals just how much is churning below the surface of these quiet men. The rampages, after all, sometimes turn out to be carefully planned outbursts that the perpetrators have been fantasizing about for a long, long time — as we see in this film.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Christian Slater stars as Bob Maconel, a bumbling, socially awkward office worker whose job consists of checking and cross-checking endless rows of numbers. He is routinely harassed by his boss and a few coworkers, and pretty much ignored by everyone else, and within the first few minutes of the film, it’s clear that Bob leads a very lonely life.
Bob is also batshit crazy. If the fake detonator and real handgun that he routinely carries to work aren’t enough to convince you of that, then the fact that he imagines his fish talking to him ought to do the trick. What do the fish say? They urge him to go through with his PLAN, which apparently consists of mowing down his coworkers with a steady spray of bullets.
But Bob is held back by his own cowardice, as well as his feelings for Venessa Parks (played by Elisha Cuthbert), so he does nothing except go over the PLAN in his head every time his boss berates him.
Then one day, a coworker named Coleman comes in and does what Bob has been dreaming of. Coleman kills several people and injures Venessa before Bob puts an end to the rampage by gunning down Coleman on his own. This act turns Bob into a hero, and changes his life. He gets a promotion, is revered by coworkers, and even starts dating Venessa — who it turns out was paralyzed from the neck down after the bullet lodged in her spine.
As the film progresses, we see how Bob responds to the changes in his life. At first he seems happy and content, but then he slowly realizes that he really wants to execute his original plan after all. Everything culminates with a surprising twist at the end that makes the viewer question the events that came before.
My Reaction: I have to admit that as I was watching He Was a Quiet Man, all I kept thinking to myself was, “Yeah, right!” for everything that happened. Bob turned into a hero and suddenly became pals with his asshat of a boss? Yeah, right. Bob and Venessa start dating and develop a fulfilling relationship? Yeah, right. Et cetera.
But then the ending really explained everything for me. I know that the end was sort of ambiguous, and the filmmaker has gone on record saying that he deliberately made it that way so that viewers could draw their own conclusions. The only thing Cappello did say was that the movie was not a dream; other than that, each viewer would have to decide what happened for him- or herself.
Obviously, the film was told from Bob’s point of view, which we already know can’t be trusted. After all, Bob is crazy — that was firmly established right from the start. To me, that explained the exaggerated actions of everyone around him. No boss could be that much of a dick in today’s litigious workplace, so the only logical explanation that I could come up with is that we were seeing Bob’s boss from Bob’s demented viewpoint. Thus, since Bob felt the guy was always picking on him and singling him out, that’s they way the boss came across to to viewers.
Ditto for everything else that happened. Hero Bob was living the life that Regular Bob so desperately wanted but could never attain — and never would, as it turned out. There never was any Coleman; that was just another part of Maconel’s delusion (Coleman being an anagram of Maconel and all).
Anyway, there was really a lot to process in this film, and it will probably take a couple of viewings to pick up on all the different nuances. Sure, it wasn’t perfect (I could have done without the cheesy goldfish FX), but it was a nice change of pace from the standard Hollywood by-the-numbers script.
Overall, I thought He Was a Quiet Man was interesting and thought-provoking. It’s not the kind of film that can boast of broad appeal, but if you’re in the mood for something different I recommend giving this one a try. It gets 7.0 stars out of 10 from me.
I just picked up the Season 3 box set of Boston Legal from a friend, and I’m very excited about watching the show again! I haven’t seen any eps since I completed Season 2 several months ago because I decided to pursue other series, like The O.C., Criminal Minds, Bones, and Without a Trace. But now that I’m done with The O.C. and am taking a break from WaT after three seasons, I’m ready for more BL.