Roedy Green I cannot tell you the plot of this movie. I am uncertain what happened, and if I told you a version, you would likely not believe me.Christian Slater plays Bob Maconel, a mousy, picked-on middle aged man. He hallucinates that his goldfish talk to him and bully him. He hallucinates/imagines killing his co-workers.You never know what is his imagination, his hallucination or twists of the screenwriters' mad fantasy.He deals with sadistic bullies for co-workers. One is female, who enjoys coming on to him, then suddenly crying out sexual harassment. I wanted a particularly sticky end for her, but was unsatisfied. Another, the man at the next desk, goes postal.One character is Venessa, a beautiful young woman paralysed from the neck down. She is a self-centred power tripper and tries to force Bob to help her commit suicide. We never know if she can be trusted or if she is just a scheming manipulator who uses Bob as a "spoon" to care for her.You see so many versions of events, you have to put on hold your decision of whether what you just saw was real.The problem with this movie is has no proper protagonist. Bob is just a colourless, mumbling dishrag. It is hard to care one way or the other what happens to him.I thought it odd that no one asked Bob why he had a loaded gun in his desk at the office, with which he shot the worker who went postal. Perhaps in the USA this is common. The only question was why he did not shoot sooner.Venessa explained the clasp on her bra to Bob, her caregiver, who had to bathe, bum wipe and spoon feed for the last few months. Surely by now he would already thoroughly understand female clothing.Much of the plot is Pythonesque. Bizarre things happen and everyone keeps a perfectly straight face and pretends they are ordinary.One amusing scene is Venessa ordering Bob around commanding him not to be "weak" not to let people push him around.The movie just seemed to meander after a shotgun start. I lost interest about half way through.

tieman64 "He Was a Quiet Man" is a poor attempt at black comedy from director Frank Cappello. The film stars Christian Slater as a white-collar worker who fantasises about murdering his boss and co-workers.Whilst "Man" contains a relatively clever narrative structure, and two good, darkly comedic moments (one in which a paralysed woman sings at a karaoke bar, another in which Slater's murder spree is interrupted by another co-worker's murder spree), the film is ultimately amateurishly directed, thin and poorly written.5/10 – Worth one viewing. See "The Assassionation of Richard Nixon", Fassbiner's "The Third Generation", "Taxi Driver", Lindsay Anderson's "If" and "Office Space" instead.

deltajvliet Christian Slater gives an outstanding, career defining performance in this great little movie. He's Bob, a mix of Milton in Office Space and Michael Douglas in Falling Down, a psychopathic loner who brings a gun to work but can't quite get up the nerve to gun down all the people he hates. In a nice little instance of dark comedy, a fellow psychopathic loner at work also brings a gun to work and begins killing people. At first Bob's somewhat pleased that someone did the dirty work for him, but when his coworker points the gun at a female colleague Bob has hidden affection for, he uses his own gun on the killer, thereby becoming a hero. Nobody ever questions why Bob had a gun in the first place, but after reading some interpretations of the movie, I understood why. Yeah, this is one of those movies you interpret. It's thoughtful and provocative and not at all times literal, but for the most part it's easy enough to follow. For an independent movie He Was a Quiet Man had quite a few moments of CGI, but it's a great example of when such a film-making tool is warranted. We're not talking Transformers or anything, it's the little things... Like when Bob talks to his fish, and we see it talk back. That was a nice little touch - the fish mirrors Bob's wants and desires and subconscious, and by doing that we're given further insight into Bob's clearly demented but fascinating mind, as well as one critical moment of foreshadowing. The supporting cast includes Elisha Cuthbert and the always reliable William H. Macy. Still, this is Slater's show. I've always liked the guy, but he's never really struck me as a serious actor. I'll have to take him more seriously from now on. 8/10

Nadstratosfer Gonczy I'm only writing this review to warn those who think a movie with William H. Macy and Christian Slater can't be all bad. It is.The only reason I'm not giving this garbage 1 star is because I've fallen asleep around an hour into it. So while the film experience itself was a torture, it did lead to a peaceful state of my mind in the end. It must have been a defensive reaction of my brain, as I wasn't even tired. The most interesting part of that evening was the plot summary, and ever since I had read it and decided to watch this particular movie, things were going steadily and continuously downhill. And I don't mean just boring; think incoherent, intelligence-insulting, frustrating, annoying to the point you're getting aggressive. Seriously, the DVD of this movie would be a riot if it included a video game allowing you to smash the characters across the face with a baseball bat or packing Elisha Cuthbert's constantly whining mouth with hot lead. All this to the incredibly lame movie soundtrack that stops suddenly once you finish off the main boss - the composer - in a long, exhausting beatdown. Now that's entertainment.Unfortunately when I'm writing this, the interaction with this movie is limited to turning the volume down or removing the DVD out of the drive. While the former helps through the soundtrack and Elisha's bitching, the movie still inflicts torment on so many levels you'll be wishing you had slept through it too...