Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

wezel2 I really enjoyed this funny little movie.This movie is about a sad, under-confident guy who is continuously run down and pushed around by the world, but at the same time despises that world, and eventually gets pushed to the limit.The performances were great - Christian Slater as the lonely, loner, loser who can't seem to make friends, or won't try. What made the performance real for me is that I have known guys like that.The office bully - sadly very real - have known and worked for idiots like this.Without going through the whole cast, these were all people that are real characters that one runs into all the time.I loved the music. It was brilliantly integrated with the scenes and perfect. Kudos to the creators for that touch.The cinematography went above and beyond, in my opinion. There were places where it reminded me of The Graduate. It succeeded in helping one get inside this guy's head, one could understand how he was feeling, what he might do as a result.There was only one point where I would have liked some clarification on plot and that was towards the end, but really, overall, I thought this movie was brilliant.

MartinHafer "He Was a Quiet Man" is an incredibly frustrating film. I saw half of it one night and the next day, I was telling my friends all about it. However, when I later went back and finished the film, this wonderful film turned sour...very sour. I hate it when you are hooked by a film--only to have the ending completely fall apart. This is because, believe it or not, through much of the film it seems like a very, very dark romantic-comedy--an odd thing, I know, but it WORKED. However, later in the film, the comedy was gone and the film simply became a dark and depressing mess.Christian Slater plays Bob--a psychotic who carries a gun to work in his briefcase. Regularly, he loads and unloads the gun--struggling within himself whether or not to murder his coworkers. Then, one day the unexpected happens. As he's loading his gun, he drops a bullet on the floor and bends down to pick it up--at which time ANOTHER crazed employee goes on a killing spree of his own!! When Bob gets off the floor, he's staring at the murderer. But instead of just shooting Bob, the two talk in a very weird and surreal manner. Ultimately, when the guy then talks of killing Bob, Bob shoots the guy first--and becomes an instant hero.What happens next is very funny--in a dark and inappropriate manner. It also, oddly, becomes a romance, as a co-worker who was paralyzed in the shooting soon falls in love with Bob...and vice-versa. It's all very cute and soon you see Bob come out of his shell and become a much healthier person. It all sound strange but cute--sort of like a Bryan Fuller show like "Pushing Daisies" (it has very similar colors, sensitivities and style). Well, this is the case--until late in the film when this entire mood vanishes and the movie is just dark and unpleasant. Clearly, the ending, if done differently, could have made this a GREAT film. As it is, however, it's just maddeningly frustrating.

MBunge With a truly creative story and a couple of engaging and image-busting performances, He Was a Quiet Man is a welcome relief from so many films that aren't nearly as clever as they think they are. I can honestly say that this movie kept surprising me with its plot twists and emotional sincerity. Writer-director Frank A. Cappello supplements his neat script with some striking imagery and lassos outstanding performances from his two leads. It's deliberately odd and unlike most motion pictures, it's must better in the middle than the beginning or the end, but this is a fine and almost exceptional piece of work.Bob Maconel (Christian Slater) is a balding, near-sighted cubicle drone. His only joys in life are catching a fleeting glimpse of the smile of his beautiful co-worker Vanessa (Elisha Cuthbert), the talking fish in his aquarium that his delusional mind has cooked up and his violent thoughts about launching a murder spree in the office. Bob is pretty much the perfect example of the isolated, barely functional guy whose rage at the world builds and builds until it finally explodes. But when the day comes and bullets start flying and bodies start falling at Bob's workplace, he's not the one doing the shooting. Some other angrily lonely loser goes on a rampage and Bob goes from office freak and whipping boy to office hero when he blows the killer away, no one realizing that Bob brought a gun to work so HE could kill everyone. What happens after that is something you should experience for yourself.I wasn't sure about this film at the start. It seemed very obvious what it was about and where it would be going, to the point where it seemed to be trying to hard. There's a point where a couple of Bob's co-workers torment him like they were all still in middle school that's transparently fake and manipulative. But I never expected someone else to go kill-crazy at Bob's office and never imagined how he'd react to that or any of the stuff that would follow. Cappello does an excellent job of setting up a story that can really only go in one direction and, with a single crazily believable twist, sends it soaring off somewhere else. It's the sort of moment that every storyteller aspires to and he nails it.Christian Slater is committed and unflinching as Bob. He's playing a screwed up loser and there's never a second in the movie where he abandons or ignores that essence. Even when he's trying to help the audience understand and empathize with what the character is feeling and needing, Slater never lets you forget that Bob has serious problems that will ultimately doom him.Yet while Slater's superb acting gets most of the spotlight, Elisha Cuthbert is calmly amazing. Most folks probably know her as Jack Bauer's daughter from 24 and I saw her name in the opening credits, but I actually forgot it was her while I was watching the film. She starts out playing Bob's fantasy, evolves into a harsh reality and then transcends that into a new existence. There's a scene that highlights a reality of life for people with severe disabilities that's at first squirmingly uncomfortable to watch, but Cuthbert draws you in and transfixes with the human dignity of her character. You stop reacting to the situation and you start reacting to her.Now, the ending is a bit contrived, especially after the impressively organic stuff in the middle of the picture. And the movie doesn't appear to appreciate the difference between a man who's crushingly unhappy and a guy who's insane, which produces a few moments where you can't be sure that the film is sure of what it's doing. Those are minor kvetches, however.He Was a Quiet Man is enjoyable and perversely charming. Everybody involved should be proud of what they made.

Nick Damian Somehow it seems that pshycotics like to wear the same style glasses and bad shirts and ties.The wardrobe dept did a great job as dressing Bob up as a freak and the music dept did a great job of the music track and theme.The story was funny, sad, dramatic and even scary at times and somehow it all seemed to fit in.What was really exceptional was the fish in the bowl and the little comments that it makes.The cast was good, the story was pretty cool and the filming was fantastic.It's amazing how then end leads from the beginning.