Review by Marty Mapes

On the box you'll find a nebbishy Christian Slater hugging a bundle of dynamite. As soon as the movie opens you'll see him as another disaffected white male ranting about how emasculating modern society is . Stroking his revolver, he fantasizes about blowing away his coworkers for perceived slights he's too inept to deal with diplomatically. It's unfortunate that filmmakers and screenwriters don't take incidents like the Omaha mall shootings or the Colorado church shootings more seriously. Here, such a character is the basis for black comedy and a little romance before returning to the dark side.

(Spoiler warning ahead:) Slater plays Bob Maconel, the bottom male in the office pecking order. The movie's hook is clever: before Bob can gun down his coworkers, another nebbish opens fire, taking out the very coworkers that Bob fantasized about killing. Their brief, funny conversation between equals ends with Bob shooting the gunman and becoming a hero.

But "clever" only gets this movie so far. What makes this movie so bad is that there is nothing real in it; there is no human or emotional truth to latch onto. And much of the reason for that is that everything is written to revolve around Bob. "The girl" has been hit by a stray bullet and she has become paralyzed. Does she blame the shooter? Does she blame God? Of course not. She blames the little invisible guy in the corner cubicle whom she's barely noticed who failed to let the shooter finish the job.

The only person you can connect to in He Was a Quiet Man is Bob. And although you can almost sympathize with a loser like him, his willingness to cross that line and kill you or me or that woman who happens to be walking by makes him truly a loser and unworthy of our attention.

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