Bob is the ultimate office drone, a character not unlike Milton, the mumbly
stapler guy in Office Space. He sits in his cubicle performing tedious data
entry procedures on long lists of multi-digit numbers, all the while
fantasizing about going Columbine on his co-workers. One day he goes to work
and begins to load a handgun, determined to execute his murderous plan for
real, but as he crawls on the floor to retrieve a dropped bullet, he hears
gunfire.
Another drone in another cubicle has beaten him to the punch!
Bob (Christian Slater) uses his own pistol to execute his fellow loser -
thus making him the office hero. He is given a big promotion, a massive raise, and some new
responsibilities. His boss also tells him to go to the hospital and visit the
gorgeous co-worker (Elisha Cuthbert) whose life he saved when he killed the
office gunman. It turns out that Cuthbert is not very grateful. The gunman's
first bullet turned her into a quadriplegic, and she wishes Bob had let the gunman finish what he
started. She makes him promise to finish the job by pushing her wheelchair in
front of a subway train. He tries, but can't go through with it and pulls her
wheelchair away at the last minute. Then a miracle occurs. She gets a bit of
life back in one hand, and the medicos say she may recover. This time she is
grateful to Bob for saving her life. Bob proceeds to become her full-time
boyfriend and caregiver, and they start to fall in love, but he harbors fears
that if and when she recovers, she will return to the hunky, rich guys she
knows how to get on demand.
Have I spoiled the film? Not at all. That's the set-up. The story goes on
from there, and eventually leads to a surprise ending which I never saw
coming, although it explained a lot of problems I had with some earlier
events. Some reviewers called the ending ambiguous, but I disagree. It was
completely clear to me what had happened, particularly when I thought about
some earlier events that had seemed confusing. I found the ending
disheartening, but not ambiguous. I also found it quite affecting, although
many other films have used similar twists, as have many episodes of the
Twilight Zone. (I half expected Rod Serling to come out of the shadows at the
end, puffing away on his usual unfiltered ciggie and pontificating solemnly
about the irony of it all.)
The script takes us through a few tone shifts, going from jittery suspense
to black comedy to social satire to tragedy, and all of the stages are
pictured inside a dream-like point of view that always borders on the surreal
and occasionally crosses the border. For example, Bob owns a talking fish who
mirrors his own world-view. The film's strangeness can prove annoying along
the way, but it actually makes perfect sense when all the secrets have been
revealed. Christian Slater does an excellent job playing the complete
antithesis of his usual cock-sure prick. This time he plays an armed and addled
Dilbert: quiet, dumpy, and nerdy; and he carries the film on the character's
narrow shoulders, with able back-up from the film's cinematographer, who
bathed the film in an otherworldly luminescence and employed some dramatic
shots and odd camera angles to give the film a surreal look to match its tone.
It's rated 8.2 at IMDb, high enough to place in the best 100 films of all
time. It's not that good, but I would not be surprised to see the rating stay
in the range of 7.0-7.5. Although surrealism and black comedy are best taken
in small doses, Quiet Man's running time is an economical 95 minutes, so it
never has a chance to overstay its welcome, and it is a surprisingly good
little film.
