"Cast out this wicked dream which has seized my heart."

First let me say that I think this film is a major achievement in the history of cinema. Hopefully to be considered thus in due time. Lynch moves on in his exploration of the "Real", where linear Time collapses and moves both ways (forward and backwards), the coherence of identities is abandoned, and "Place" is just an opening into a different one, never a constant in itself. If Lost Highway and Mullholand Dr. violated and experimented with Time's linearity and the coherence of identities, this movie is confident in its use of "slippery time" and "reflected selves". And, for the first time, accomplishes the same for "Place" as well. We are dealing with reflections here, some mirror-like or upside-down, others - a deeper version of the surface. Lynch entirely abandons the basic grid of "modern" narrative, yet manages to tell a story. I will try to retrace some of the reflections.

There is a woman; she has agency, she acts freely. She pursues Love, Sweetness, a Palace. She finds death, becomes a prostitute, she has to fight against some "Phantom", she will see the end of her world. There is yet another woman, she is "bound", just like a circus animal, someone controls her. She has a Screw-Drive-er (in her stomach), she bears a child, she is lost. She wants to kill the free woman. She is instructed to annihilate that freedom (When she will manage to do it, they will merge for a moment in a kiss. It is exactly midnight - both hands of the clock have finally met). There is this Phantom, this "something", he controls the woman like a puppet on a string. Once she'll find him, she will try to kill him. Which will only make him happy, maybe even give him an orgasm. She'll be able to catch a glimpse of herself as the stupid clown she really is, and go backwards into room #47, her blind spot (the second half of an AK47, the first half of which is echoed backwards in the letters written on her fist). But in order to do that, she'll have to try and go against the current, to get deeper "Inland". Because there is always some "Crimp", some blind spot, someone's hiding just in front of you. She'll unfold that crimp, but if she'll push too hard, the light she shines on it might go out, like an overcharged Light Bulb. Then there is a deeper version, in polish, in the past. Once again: a prostitute, a violent man, a cheating woman. And at the heart of it all - the barest version (reality? humanity?). Tamed rabbits (implicitly sexual, like PlayBoy's logo) living in a place where everything is completely uncanny, made up, dreamed up, some weird sitcom (who watches it?). Perhaps there is some way out still, into Sweetness, to The Palace, to Pomona (a city named after the Roman goddess of abundance). Perhaps not: the bright future will only reveal a past of violence ("Ah, but there has to be a murder in it," says the visitor and smiles). In Pomona the girls will sing about a sinner-man and dance. Then there is also the director, King-sley, shouting "Action!" ("Axxonn", "Axe On"), he directs her to her death, then applauds her (you might say the horse has been brought to the well, but drank of its own volition). It doesn't stop here, everything is reflected on the male side as well. An excellent and in depth exploration of these themes could be found on the message board in the official site.

Lynch offers us a glimpse of the empire that rules the In-Land, where the Screwdriver meets the Crimp (to produce Truth as an offspring), and a woman gets in trouble for having the American Dream hardwired as her personality.

Finally, I'd like to point out that this is Laura's Best as well (perhaps that is what is written on her fist?). Her acting is breathtaking. She even betters her confessed roll model - Deneuve in Repulsion.

My only caveat would be that Lynch seems to have dreamed up his own private Pomona in the shape of Eastern mysticism, which seems a bit naive. Had he researched it, the amount of violence hidden beneath these scriptures (the Gita, Upanishads, etc.) would have been easily uncovered (Brahminism, State Vaishnavism, Militarism, not to mention the English translations/interpertations originating as a tool for colonial rule). But all this should not distract from the fact that this movie is a masterpiece. A genuine and timely expansion of the limits of Cinema and Narrative.

In a way, I keep imagining Lynch as constantly watching Sunset Boulevard (as the gaffer, offering a Light Bulb), asking himself, "how could this come to be?"


*Some statements may be viewed as containing spoilers.*

I saw "Inland Empire" at the AFI Festival and feel it is simply phenomenal. I have no idea what it is about and at the moment it doesn't matter. I actually made an effort not to analyze it and just watch it and enjoy the ride. And a great ride it was.

I was afraid what was to happen with the new medium but David Lynch really succeeded in pulling off some beautiful DV. I was impressed. The description of DV he gave at the 20th anniversary screening of Blue Velvet was, as it turns out, accurate: "It looks terrible... but it looks beautifully terrible." It was just so interesting looking and so perfect for the movie that it wasn't distracting in anyway. I left the experience of watching it feeling it couldn't have been done any other way. And although I will admit that I will still miss the look of a David Lynch movie on film, I didn't find anything to be lacking at all.

The acting! Wow! I'm almost speechless about Laura Dern's performance especially, but we need to give credit to several people here. One must keep in mind that none of the performers had any clue as to the purpose and meaning of Mulholland Dr. And yet Laura Dern, Grace Zabriskie, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, Julia Ormond and a few from Poland I'm not familiar with succeeded in giving such interesting, dynamic and subtle performances. Dern especially was chameleon-like. So often did she go from one emotion to another while maintaining control of all of the nuances one would expect from reality. Mr. Lynch's ability to extract the perfect performance, never ceases to amaze me. That ability shows through scenes from his work that run so well with actors that are not know to be nor do they prove to be exceptional. There was some of that here but the spotlight was really on actors that know their trade very well.

Inland Empire was unmistakeably Lynch but it was far more expressionistic than anything we've seen. "Lost Highway" was a situation comedy compared to this. At least with that and "Mulholland Dr." you somewhat know where to begin. "Inland Empire" doesn't give you that. It is longer and has more angles and doesn't allow you to say "Ok let's start here and work our way out." As a matter of fact, I'm not convinced there is anything to get. Well, that's not true. There is something there for sure but I think it may be something that will eventually break down. Like the farther you walk down a street to see the stores, the thicker the fog gets around you. The reason I say that is not purely because of the experience of watching the movie's chaos but also because of the process he went through. I have no doubt that everything you see has its place on the same quilt but why was "Rabbits" there? This is something that was it's own project. A stand-alone endeavor. And yet the same performances were used in "Inland Empire". But then again, we saw new camera angles we hadn't see before. Were they filmed simultaneously with the footage originally presented in "Rabbits" because he saw it moving out of that world all along or were they filmed recently to bind it to "Inland Empire"? "Axxon N." allusions were also a surprise. That is also a stand-alone (though unproduced) series that has been completely written for quite some time. Why allude to it in here, especially when people can't refer to the series? Who knows? We can also question the connections since David Lynch said he got a lot of the ideas separately and serendipitously and only after it had begun did he understand why his brain was giving him these ideas. That's not to say there is no common thread. He is not a common filmmaker and I certainly do not believe he would just do things meaninglessly for the sake of being weird though many are quick to believe such a thing -- after all, attention spans and mental growth potential have been left in the womb by many a film-goer. But because of the change in medium I will grant myself the freedom to toy with the idea that it may not be just a puzzle to piece together. That plots were built around subconscious connections. Like a Miro painting maybe. The common themes and common moods and common chaos of the different threads presented may be as much part of the movie's purpose as the actual plot elements.

Anyhow, it's going to be excellent seeing it it several times over in theaters. All three hours of it. Because it will take many viewings and coffee shop discussions to get even a greasy grip on the essence of this piece. And then maybe we can see if it reveals itself to be even more than the exceptional movie it seems to be.


Alternately brilliant and massively self-indulgent, (three hours? now really, David!). A reasonably straight-forward narrative, (a movie is haunted by the 'ghosts' of a former production of the same tale), is turned inside out, upside down and completely spatially altered by Lynch's unfettered and, you may say, unique imagination.

Watching this film is like being allowed access to a very talented and very disturbed artist's psycho-babble. Or maybe it's just a very egotistically talented artist's gigantic joke, (who or what are the giant rabbits?). Whatever, it is still hypnotically watchable which says a lot for Lynch. I can't imagine any other director making this movie, (or any movie like it, not that there might be), and keeping you interested or making you care about the outcome or the fate of the characters, or rather the fate of one character, the actress playing the leading role in the film within the film and whose dream/nightmare most of the film seems to be.

For this we have to thank, not only Lynch, but the extraordinary Laura Dern who gives a tour-de-force performance. She's all over the shop but then I suppose that is what acting is all about. Above all, she convinces you that this is serious stuff or at least that she is taking it seriously even if no-one else is. Shot on digital video it is also as much 'about' the process of creating, as opposed to 'making', a film as it is 'about' anything else and in the performances Lynch extracts from his cast, (and not just Dern), you could argue that it is also about the process of acting.

It is also far from being a great film, (though it has at least one great sustained sequence - you figure), and at times it resembles nothing more than the out-takes from "Twin Peaks", "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Drive" though it lacks the cohesion of those films, (it's the most off-the-wall of any of Lynch's works and that includes "Eraserhead), and yet it is still extraordinary, unmistakeably the work of a unique and visionary artist and no-one, only Lynch, could have made it.


This film has some interesting moments, especially at the beginning, but it is entirely too long and disjointed. Lynch likes to make the point again and again that our sense of narrative is socially constructed, and he thus takes great delight in subverting our expectations by breaking the narrative line repeatedly. Okay. Enough already. We get the point. On the other hand, we might argue that a film with a tightly woven narrative line is never a bad thing. What is bad are the tiresome shots of darkened hallways, the constant entering into darkened rooms while the crappy electronic score kicks in (I guess we're supposed to feel a troubling eeriness in the air) in the background, and subtexted stage acts (in this case humans with fake rabbit heads) that don't enrich the story line, even though they are meant to thematize the breakdown in marital relations by showing how the language of married couples ceases to be communicative (gee, didn't T. S. Eliot already do this?). David Lynch, it's time for you to reinvent yourself. Stop dishing out cinematic crap that looks like a remake of your last film. This is a film for die-hard Lynch fans only. To call it enriching and fresh is laughable. If it were tomorrow, then I probably wouldn't have seen this film today. Right? Sheesh.


There isn't a person I know who would watch this movie more than once if even that. But I will and don't ask me why. It just draws me in with the sights and sounds and I want to see what appears on the screen next. I also want to know what it all means. I love a challenge. This movie is filet mignon to the greaseburger that most finds it's way on movie screens today. Yet it doesn't make "sense." Or does it? Would Lynch make a movie that cannot be unraveled? If so this might be the first. I mostly unraveled all the rest I've seen, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Dr, each in two viewings. Though Blue Velvet really never presented many difficulties. Inland Empire though, sheesh, I still have no clue what many of these scenes mean. The rabbits for example, I have no idea. But I see a woman getting lost in her acting, meshing it with reality. It is a story of utter depravity, betrayal, revenge, and redemption, and the actress from the original Polish movie runs parallel to Nikki Grace, played by Dern. In the end Grace hits rock bottom dying among the street people of Hollywood Blvd. "No more blue tomorrows" the street person told her. Ahh Grace's line from earlier, "only blue tomorrows," from the movie script as she resisted the prospects of having an affair. But the Hollywood street scene was just acting. "Cut...marvelous Nikki!" the director says but she still hasn't woken up. Then she walks in a theater and sees herself on the screen. Huh? It's just acting and this is the beginning of her coming out. Then the psychologist walks up the stairs, Dern follows and goes through a green hallway where we see door #47. That number was a cue from earlier. I'll try to catch it next time. Grace embraces and kisses the Polish actress then disappears. Then like Blue Velvet, and unlike Mulholland Dr, we have a happy ending. The Polish actress reunites with her family and Grace sits smiling on the couch in the mansion where the movie started. The nightmare is over. As the credits roll the one legged woman looks up and says, "sweet" and the players dance to a Gospel like song of being saved from a turbulent river. Not half bad for a general understanding but if you are like me, you want more. I'm sure much more is there but that means watching it again and this is a long one.


Three hours of David Lynch at his most fragmented and unsettling. Normal Lynch themes and techniques run through story, infidelity, identities changing, cyclical editing, Hollywood artifice, oblique dialoge, deadpan comedy, and the most disturbing special effects since Eraserhead. It's a feverish nightmare with unrelentingingly haunting and ominous music and a few pop songs(Beck's black tamborine, and doo-wop classic, "The Locomotion") and unique industrial/pop hybrids by Lynch himself. The film is shot on digital as opposed to film, and Lynch milks every trick lighting effect you could imagine in this film, and if nothing else he's really expands the possibilities of digital movie-making, by using the washed out colors and light sensitivity of his cameras as opposed to trying to recreate the look of film. Laura Dern shows an incredible amount of range and manages to hold you to the screen with her for the entire film, and at three hours that's a feat. My biggest complaint is the length, it's too long to sit in a theater, and I was literally exhausted by the end. If you liked Mullholand Drive, Lost Highway, Eraserhead and the more abstract films of Lynch, then this is his masterpiece. It's even got scenes from his online series "Rabbits", linked into story, and appearances by Laura Harring and Justin Theroux(who's a main character in similar position as he was) from Mullholand Drive, connecting it directly to the rest of the Lynch universe. Gave me a headache too, but I kinda expected it that, but it was one of the most rewarding headaches I have had the pleasure of receiving.


It's a foregone conclusion that attempting to make sense of a David Lynch film doth not time well spent make. Lynch is one of modern cinema's great provocateurs, a love-him-or-hate-him cinematic savant who manages to achieve with film what most only dare to attempt with paint or poetry. With this in mind, it should come as no surprise to learn that Lynch's latest mind-bender, INLAND EMPIRE, is a frighteningly surreal descent into paranoid perplexity that exhilarates every bit as much as it bewilders.

INLAND EMPIRE ostensibly concerns actress Nikki Grace's (the marvelous Laura Dern) involvement with a career-making new film project. But, Lynch being Lynch, this was never going to be that simple. We later learn the project is the remake of a cursed film that never wrapped production as its two stars were brutally murdered. And here's where narrative coherence takes a flying leap, and we should ready ourselves for what's to come.

At first, Lynch's decision to shoot on cheap digital video seems to prove distracting, as if the comparative nastiness of the image quality will detract from our ability to invest in the story. But, as the film progresses, it settles into a look all its own, and the grainy, hand-held camera-work actually seems more real and immediate, drawing us ever-closer to the edges of our seats as the narrative twists and contorts.

In INLAND EMPIRE, characters cross over the threshold defining the limits of reality and fiction, co-exist with their other-world counterparts in one fluctuating existential plane and change wholly and completely from one scene to another, Lynch all the while serving up the kind of hallucinatory hell that cinema-goers have come to demand of him. Just as you think you're figuring it out, Lynch throws in a dance sequence set to 'The Locomotion,' cuts to a sitcom comprised of giant rabbit-people, or offers a glimpse at what appears to be footage straight from the original doomed film.

As time perpetually folds back in on itself and the film's visual motifs begin to pile up, it becomes clear that this is Lynch's most daring and bizarre film yet. This is video art as feature film, with a serpentine narrative that defies comprehension driving us onward to oblivion with Lynch at the wheel. Its most obvious points of comparison are Lynch's own Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, but even they seem like child's play when compared to EMPIRE, which offers tantalising clues to unlocking its mysteries, with the audience forever ten strides behind.

This is Lynch down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass, a psychotropic epic that remains fascinating throughout, despite its three hour duration and the intentionally confounding nature of its plot. If you appreciate Lynch's previous exercises in dream logic and nightmare vision, and can handle the extended running time, INLAND EMPIRE is essential viewing. It's a terrifying and uncompromised journey to the depths of the subconscious, and one of the boldest cinematic statements of the year.

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Nikki: Are you enjoying yourself, Freddie? Freddie Howard: Well... There is a vast network, right? An ocean of possibilities. I like dogs. I used to raise rabbits. I've always loved animals. Their nature. How they think. I have seen dogs reason their way out of problems. Watched them think through the trickiest situations. Do you have a couple of bucks I could borrow? I've got this damn landlord.

Wow! Okay....so if you thought David Lynch's last film 'Mulholland Drive' wasn't weird enough....'Inland Empire' will be a real treat. Loaded with a bunch of cameos from high profile and very talented actors, 'Inland Empire' is basically a 3-hour nightmare of our heroine Nikki Grace (Laura Dern). Nikki is a struggling actress who gets a part in a big Oscar bait movie that's a remake of a Polish film that was never completed. However the acceptance of the role comes with a cautious and spooky warning from some random old woman (Grace Zabriskie -- HBO's Big Love) who tells Nikki that the movie is "cursed". Nikki, who thinks the old woman is off her rocker, accepts the role anyway and after that strange things begin to happen to her and the lines between reality and fantasy begin to blur. Unlike any of Lynch's other films beside perhaps 'Eraserhead', 'Inland Empire' makes absolutely no sense. 'Mulholland Drive' at least had an understandable plot, 'Inland Empire' is just so scattered, off-the-wall and random that it's impossible to understand from one viewing. I guess I'll have to watch it a couple more times to TRULY understand the film. That being said I look forward to seeing it again. Although it didn't make sense, it's a beautiful film from a cinematography/directing standpoint. Always the innovator, David Lynch takes his film-making craft to new heights with this extremely original and awesomely shot three hour epic. The acting is solid as well. Laura Dern is absolutely incredible as the lead, giving one of if not her best screen performance yet. Dern nails the role and let's hope for a Best Actress Oscar Nomination that WON'T happen next awards season. That being said Dern has support from big actors in tiny roles. Jeremy Irons is fabulous as always as the film within a film's director while Justin Theroux is perfectly cast as Dern's co-star. Harry Dean Stanton, who you might know as the twisted polygamist tyrant in HBO's masterful drama 'Big Love', is delightfully creepy/awkward in a minuscule part as Jeremy Iron's character's assistant. Daine Ladd, Naomi Watts, Mary Steenburgen, William H. Macy, Scott Coffey, Laura Harring, Diane Ladd and Big Love's Grace Zabriskie (who is delightfully morbid) are all solid in cameo roles. Like I previously stated, 'Inland Empire' probably won't make any sense to you. Your average movie goer will hate it, but those who see movies more as art rather than entertainment will probably find some way of appreciating it. I didn't love 'Inland Empire', I'm not even sure I liked it, but I sure as hell appreciated it. Grade: B


Lynch is on familiar ground here, echoing what he began on "Lost Highway" and added to with "Mulholland Drive": the interchangeable/mirror-identity trick, in-narrative self-references, the Mobius-strip construction of narrative loops, a re-imagining of time itself (the film presents itself as unfolding memory). Thematically, we are dealing with questions of identity, infidelity, memory and various epistemological problems. However, Lynch goes much further here stylistically than he has before, making very effective use of digital's simplicity (even as his montage and musical mixing reaches new levels of intensity) and making what is surely his most detailed and intricate film yet.

The film has a coherent meta-narrative, and, yes, Lynch does wrap things up (at least formally), but once down the rabbit hole we are taken through a mirrored fun house where it seems as if the film's very images have been sliced and refracted with (and through) shards of mirror. Its recursive structure is at once maddening and entrancing, and at times one feels as if Lynch is trying to one-up himself in the connections department. However, I was much less bored than I had expected to be and honestly cannot say that the film needs editing-- Lynch has gotten to the point, once unimaginable for him, where the appearance of randomness is both welcome and integral to the story.

I hope Lynch continues down this path, but it will likely be commercial suicide. He will have to make another more conventional movie or two to pay the bills, but we certainly must be grateful that he went way out on a limb with Inland Empire.


Official reviews of this latest film from David Lynch descried it at best as "opaque", "hard to summarize" and "to be experienced rather than explained", to at worst "indulgent", "complete nonsense" and made without consideration for the audience. However, in defense of David Lynch, for one who has followed a number of his films Inland Empire holds a coherent and linear narrative, and one that most novice Lynch viewers can follow with a few pointers. As with many of Lynch's films, much of the narrative is played out in the main character's subconscious or dreamscape. Arguable in the case of Inland Empire this is true for the entire film. There a few mechanism's Lynch has used in a number of films that recur here to highlight this. In particular floor-to-ceiling red drapes (best known for the "Black Lodge" of Twin Peaks) indicate the subconscious, and the character moving through the drapes either indicates a deeper delving in to the subconscious or an elevation towards reality. Also a static room populated with strange characters usually indicates the very depths of the subconscious and typically as a character approaches this room this indicates a complete detachment from reality and decent in to psychosis. It is important to note, as with Mulholland Drive, the principle character the audience is introduced to  Nikki (as played by Laura Dern)  is not the protagonist. It is the protagonist's most prominent extension of herself in her own subconscious, though not necessarily the only one. The genuine protagonist makes a brief appearance half way through the film with only one line of dialogue. The basic story is of "a woman in trouble" as quoted by Lynch. This can be expanded on with a number of options without spoiling the film (Lynch's real skill is making films that are practically impossible to spoil). This troubled woman is a neglected, possibly abused, wife who could possibly be a stranger in a foreign land thus furthering her alienation. However she has dreams of much greater things  hence her subconscious extension of herself as Nikki (Laura Dern), a desirable movie star. In her real life she pursues her dream through a one-sided affair with a Lothario type figure. She is jilted by her lover and is left with an unwanted pregnancy. She loses the baby  "her son"  either through a beating from her husband, or a self inflicted or back street abortion. At this point she may or may not murder her husband. Either way guilt, anger and abandonment combine with her existing feelings of alienation to accelerate her downward spiral. The usual hard drugs and sex follow, further increasing the protagonist's desire to detach from reality. Ultimately she dies, either physically or through a complete and permanent detachment from reality  as indicated by the brief uniting of her happy family, son included. In this context, be it however close to Lynch's vision, all the imagery of the film can be interpreted and the plot followed from beginning to end. Lynch always leaves his films open to interpretation, and he is especially reluctant to explain his stories  the above "a woman in trouble" was his most forthcoming explanation of this film when pushed. This is definitely a film for the viewer to choose to be engaged and not simply an indulgence by and for David Lynch himself.


Director David Lynch refuses to give clear explanations on his movies(with the exceptions of The Elephant Man and The Straight Story)and he prefers the spectator to making the homework of taking out conclusions.I like a lot the films he does but I do not try to find in them a clear explanation.I just enjoy the extraordinary talent Lynch has of creating emotions and producing feelings without a too coherent story.He uses all the instruments to give us something unique which we may not understand it immediately but something which we will never forget.Inland Empire is a very interesting experiment and we can see the same surrealistic style he used on most of his movies.After Eraserhead,his brilliant first film,Lynch continued with more normal films,like The Elephant Man or Dune.But,with Blue Velvet,he backed to show the oneiric feeling he had shown in Eraserhead (although on a lesser degree).With Inland Empire,I had the perfect sensation I was in a dream(or,best said,on a nightmare).But this film is not for everyone:its running time is of 3 hours.Lynch plays with our perception in the time and the reality to create a very interesting experience but which will not satisfy to the people who are looking for a clear story.Lynch makes us taking out conclusions all the time.The film is made with a digital video and that thing helps because it creates more mystery.Laura Dern brings an amazing performance.She always acted well but I never thought she had so much talent.I do not know if I can recommend Inland Empire to everyone:I liked it pretty much and I think it's a very interesting experiment.But I understand some people will not like it.Inland Empire is very interesting and it makes us taking out conclusions.And I always appreciate that.


I did not enjoy this movie. I understood most of the story line (not much of a line, but more of a time traveling scribble), and was able to follow most of the abstract and interpret it for what it was, but this movie just did NOT do it for me. I've seen thousands of films, and for as long as I've known his name, for some reason I'd not seen any of his films. This was my first Lynch film, and as such I had no expectations whatsoever.

I felt fear, amusement, I jumped out of fright once, felt anxious, laughed a bit, and was otherwise bored and under stimulated. Very likely I will score it a 4, for the fact that regardless of the severe lack of a understandable plot, or decipherable sequencing, etc, the effective use of sounds, lighting, perspective, and more that drove me to FEEL something from the film was very, very well done.

I don't watch trailers or read reviews before watching something new, so I had no idea what to expect. I wouldn't be surprised if someone says 'well you really have to see one or two of his other films to really understand and appreciate it', but, that's not true. It might acclimate me to his odd and original techniques and style, but unless this film, er, video, is tied to another by being part of a series or trilogy, it should be able to be judged fully and honestly without any prior exposure to the director's previous work.

What I watched was, to me, the very near equivalent of a weird, bothersome, torturous half-nightmare, as well illustrated as one could possibly do so through the chosen medium. The confusion, the transformations, from one place to another, one person to another; it was very surreal. What I did not expect was that I would feel that such an experience was such a waste of my time. If I had woken at the end, rested at 7am from a good night's sleep and feeling a bit funny from the insane dream I had, I may have been just fine; I quite enjoy psychedelics and the insanity of my own dreams. Rather, I spent half the night on HIS dream, and feel I am a bit numb in the brain from the experience.

I know that all of the film-school graduates may disagree with me, with him being a much loved director, but come on now, if this is beautiful art, then so are paintings of soup cans.


You look. You experience time. You dream. Reality is a combination of all three. The Inland Empire is not Hollywood, the town of make believe, but you and your inner empire of thought and delusion.

Movies are imaginary concepts, yet we all get caught in the net,like lost fish. Our knowledge of the real is not our five senses alone, but a mix of memory and wish.

Intertwined with loss and hope. Loss of the past and hope for the future neither of which exist, except in mind.

This is an expanded sit-com.

A movie within a movie within a nightmare. Do spiders have nightmares? Do you have to be big or small to have emotions? A snail or an ape?


This was my favourite film of the year by far. I always love the work of David Lynch, and this is by far his best work yet. It is 3 hours long, and some parts may seam overly long at first, but the second time you watch it it all seams perfect. This film is only let down by one minor complaint about the way it is filmed, with a Digial camera, though the shots are beautifully clear and so sharp they suck you in, there is moments of shaking and easy moving camera that at first I disliked, but it grows on you. INLAND EMPIRE will not be to everyone's taste, but i'm happy to say to those it will appeal, It is well worth it! 20 out of 10!


I've my own opinion about Lynch. He's a rather crude arranger, while being a sublime painter at the same time. His ambition is to portray, portray philosophical aspects of life and he uses first a layer of abstraction, a net of relations that correspond to the philosophical aspects in question and then a colouring and flavouring of the pieces in this net.

The likability of the outcome depends mostly on the last step, whereas the first step is the foundation of any real artistic claim. All of Lynch's films I've seen, four in total so far, follow this procedure and none of them does flat out fail.

"Inland empire" is about captivity in time, even if you said to yourself that you had understood nothing about the film, you would subscribe that. When it comes to Lynch, look at what is there, evidently, and don't try to look out for things that aren't there. Is Vladimir Harkonnen's sadism subtle? No, nothing is, Lynch doesn't need that, he's a crude arranger, subtle is only the look on things, the things themselves are crude.

So, how can you be caught in time? That's a philosophical question and all that "Inland empire" wants is to transport an idea of how you can be so! Actually, I haven't seen one film of Lynch whose philosophical questions wouldn't be covered in Schopenhauer's work, but I like his films still, because he always goes a step further, personalises the questions, links them to his own life.

I could go on and decipher "Inland empire", it wouldn't be that hard, knowing the answers, but that shouldn't be my job here. Let me just point to some essential elements. You stand before your future or past and you can't link to it. People are seen in very different settings, under very different influences, and they fill them out, sometimes grotesquely passive, the sets range from marble mansion, over Polish province to Californian sidewalk. You also see fighting spirit, surprises. It is important though that battling remains in a larger cage too, there's no development here like in "Wild at heart". There's a film in the film and you often don't know whose script you follow. Finally, there is salvation, again linked to fertility, but this time not as a natural conclusion, but as an act of will, a decision to break out of ones captivity in time.

In the flowing of time, take a break.


"Inland Empire" is best enjoyed if you look at it as a summarization of Lynch's career. Everything that is good or bad about Lynch, depending on who you are talking to, can be found in this production. I don't think it is top tier Lynch but it does feel endlessly fascinating because it allows the filmmaker to use every trick he has learned in over three decades of movie-making. I'm not wasting my time with plot points - each viewer has the right to come up with his/her own interpretations. Not unlike Lynch's "Lost Highway," I think it got something to do with repressed anguish and role-playing. But, who knows? I did think it was a bit long. I do want to recommend viewers to watch it either very late at night or early in the morning - it is the kind of movie that feeds on a specific kind of environment. The brilliant sound design need to be appreciated without any distractions.


Not for everyone: one could almost dismiss it as a soft sexploitation movie from the eighties. But no.

This is about an obsessive little girl who is turning into a woman. The characters around her are here to reflect the wicked light she is shining, and emphasize facets of her personality, as she is wrecking havoc around her.

It is all then about the sexual desires of women and men. How they cheat. Whom they love. What it is that they want. What they would do to get it. Only one character is "not normal " in this movie, and this is the scary part: all the others could be us to some degree.

One flaw in this movie: the voice-over on two occasions. Obviously the director could not find a way could convey the message. Pity. Otherwise, it would have a perfect little venomous movie.


Valerie Kaprisky plays "Chris" the 18-year-old daughter of "Claude" (Caroline Cellier, who won a 1985 French Cesar for best supporting actress in the film). The two are summer vacationing at an upscale beach resort in the south of France (while dad works in Paris). Nearby lives longtime family friend, "Vic" (Jacques Perrin). It's all quite beautiful, but we quickly learn everything is not well in this hedonistic enclave of affluence. Through a flashback sequence, it's learned that two years earlier Chris became pregnant by the much-older Vic. She ultimately had an abortion and refused to tell her family who the father was. But the experience has obviously left Chris with emotional scars and left Vic very nervous. A subsequent sting from a jellyfish while swimming also leaves Chris physically scarred, further bruising her ego. Enter "Romain," (Bernard Giraudeau) a local Don Juan (and part time pimp) who makes a play for Chris' 39-year-old mom, Claude. Their burgeoning affair obviously bothers Chris. She scornfully tells Claude she's past her time (i.e.: too old for this game). While Chris' response to mom's illicit romance is not surprising, her true underlying motivations seem a little murky. There are hints that Chris has known Romain for some time as she tries in vain to seduce him away from mom. Perhaps Chris really is jealous, wanting to have Romain for herself, or perhaps she mostly just wants to separate Romain from her mom out of loyalty to her dad. Regardless, it becomes evident that the jellyfish isn't the only character in this soap opera with potentially stinging tentacles. As Chris encounters disappointment, her escapades become more manipulative. She now wants only to "win," no matter what that entails or who gets hurt. For a while that means forever taunting Vic and briefly taking her aggressions out on a vacationing German couple. But the climax comes only after dad's belated arrival to join the family. This development affords Chris the opportunity to blackmail Romain into taking her on a date (threatening to expose the illicit affair to dad if Romain refuses). I won't give away the spoiler, but you can guess it's not pretty.


..and you will have a good idea of this film. I haven't seen it in years, might have been on Bravo before they went edited and commercial... Anyway, the plot summary doesn't do this film justice. This is an excellent trashy movie about a good little bad girl who does a lot of naked damage for no real reason other than some mommy issues. Truly textbook psych101 stuff but still fun to watch.


Chris is eighteen and summering with her 38 year-old Mom in the south of France. Also spending the summer at the resort is Romain. Two years earlier Chris met and fell in love with Romain. He used her and broke her heart. Now she is a cynical manipulator, with a lesbian lover at school and a middle-aged male friend of her parents, Vic.

The story of how Chris comes to terms with her love for Romain is told through the eyes of several people, including an unseen narrator, and flashbacks.

There are several interesting side stories that help develop the main characters. The setting of the south of France is great. Visually stunning. Also the choice of music is very interesting.

The primary deficiency is some editing problems and the subtitles run off the screen sometimes.


This film shows "Poland B" or the Poland that escapes media's attention, usually focused on the successes of the country's transtional period (or its failures, as in the results of the recent elections). Set in Warsaw, the film follows a story of a young girl living in the kind of "mega-block" that makes vasts portions of Warsaw look like Moscow or Tirana. Hardly anything that is not bleak. Seeing it at the Chicago Film Festival, I noticed the gradual cessation of the audience's chuckles, so common among Americans viewing foreign films portraying experiences not immediately recognizable to them. By the film's end, the room was quiet, and I personally felt almost physically assaulted, the way many people, I suppose, reacted to Lars von Trier's last picture. Unlike "Dancer in the Dark", however, "Czesc Tereska" offers nothing but truth, a painful and utterly bleak truth, which connects us with the kinds of human experience we usually shy away from. A must see, but don't say I didn't warn you.


This modest, non-color film by Robert Glinski is one of the most important achievements of Polish cinema after the year 1989. Not just because it won many prestigious awards in the country as well as abroad. (That includes the most important Golden Lions at the Festival in Gdynia the Polish Eagle for the best picture of the year). That is because it is one of the deepest insides and observations of the modern Poland and the costs of changes going in it. The picture is more emotional due to the fact that Glinski turnes his camera on the weakest, nearly children.

The action of the film takes place in a block neighborhood, where the camera only very rarely looked in. The main character's family is neither good nor bad. It is frighteningly normal. The father drinks more and more and occasionally loses his job, while the religiously fanatical mother focuses on the growing daughter. Tereska (Ola Gietner, given the American Young Artist Awards, a teenager form of Oscar) who dreamed about an Art School, gets o a Tailor School. Since she dreams about creating fashion clothes, it is a good direction. The false of that direction will be unnoticed in her environment.

What Tereska has left is the playground filled with its subculture and materialism. Here, nothing except the feeling of being hopeless, is stable. Even friendship and whatsmore the thing that seems to be love. Tereska is however looking for some warm and she finds it thanks to a disabled porter. The relation between that seems at first odd, but later kind of charming. It probably would have turned into something beautiful. It would be a union of the weak against the cruel world. But it would be impossible because of the surrounding, this relations evolves in. Traited by her closest friend and left alone by her family, the girl will seek revenge...

Non-color tape, documentary style, a collection of cast including breakthrough performances and professional actors (Zbigniew Zamachowski as Edzio) - all that seems that Glinski's movie is watched as a common thing that a normal person has contact every day with. The film was shot in one of the block neighborhoods of Warsaw's Prague, but this picture could have been set in many other places. Everywhere where there are no jobs or dreams and where the only thing left is a gray existence with social institutions like the administration or even church, feeling totally helpless. The picture is unwanted, but extremely real.


A talented and pretty little Tereska learns how to live. She does not know how to dream, she was never told that her life belonged to her. All she knows is that she must be nice, praise God by singing in a church choir, don't talk too much, don't fight for her rights, and keep most of her thoughts secret. Nobody cares what she feels and thinks anyway. She is desperately looking for love. But where can she find it if her parents, her teachers, her friends do not know it either?

In a very well designed way this film shows what steps are taken to make a little young angel into a vicious devil. It happens slowly and it is hard to tell who is to blame. An excellent story to start thinking about values, how they are born and why we need them. The film also shows how different we all are and that the only way to be able to live together is to communicate openly and honestly. It seems so simple, yet so difficult. The only time Tereska gets the courage to talk about her dreams she gets scared to death in a self destructive outburst of anger.

I give this movie a 10 because it touches so deeply on the most important life issues: how we think, make decisions, and how narrow minded we are when taking care of our daily problems. It for sure is not a comedy, but I laughed quite a few times. All in all it is a very stimulating movie.


Sort of an early "Unforgiven" in some ways. Also similar to director Lewis' "Terror in a Texas Town" though thankfully not as goofy or campy. You get a real sense of the wild west slowly being tamed, of it making the uneasy transition from a violent, lawless land to a reasonably civilized place where law and order stand a chance. I liked Randolph Scott's metaphor for the town, that it's like a wild animal that keeps getting kicked, and sooner or later it's going to do more than just snarl and growl miserably; it's going to bite back.

Scott makes a good, twinkle-eyed loner hero and Angela Lansbury is quite attractive as his leggy showgirl love interest, (though she would begin playing mothers of grown children just a few years later) but their romance is rather obligatory and uninspired. Both the villains are effective, Warner Anderson as the unscrupulous (what else?)womanizing businessman and Michael Pate as the sinister gloved gunman (Lewis seems to have a thing about gunman wearing gloves). Anderson's line deliveries are extremely flat and matter of fact, which just makes him that much more detestable somehow. He's like a greed machine, no heart, no emotion whatsoever.

At first glance this may seem like no more than just another passable western, but it's got some meat on its bones. And Lewis really shines when it comes to building the suspense leading up to the inevitable bar room showdown between the bad guy and the good.


A town is at the crossroads between law and order and its commercial interests, saloon owner Cody Clarke (John Emery) and mayor Hamer Thorne (Warner Anderson) choose the latter in order to maintain the surging saloon business. In order to achieve their goal they have to get rid of the competent marshal played by Randolph Scott, and hire a gunman (Michael Pate) to take care of him. Scott is wounded and widely believed to have been killed, but comes back to settle scores, while his ex-wife (Angela Lansbury) who is now a singer and dancer in a burlesque company comes into town and does a quite revealing song and dance number. Directed by B film genius Joseph H. Lewis, the film has originality, style, and quite an interesting premise, though the opportunities slip by.


In Medicine Bend, Marshal Calem Ware {Randolph Scott} is the man that brought law and order to the town, supported by the powerful rancher Asaph Dean (James Bell) and his reputation; his skill with his gun is frequently tested by gunners that unsuccessfully challenge him. When the greedy local businessman Hamer Thorne (Warner Anderson) brings the actress Tally Dickenson (Angela Lansbury) to perform a show for the locals, Calem is haunted by his past since Tally is his wife that left him in Apache Wells due to his dangerous way of life. Meanwhile Thorne associates to the scum Cody Clark (John Emery) and together they hire the outlaw Harley Baskam (Michael Pate) that is considered the fastest gunner in the region to duel with Calem and kill him and leave Medicine Bend ready for their dirty businesses.

"A Lawless Street" is a good western about a man that makes the difference in a small town. I am not a great fan of this genre, but I like a lot the elegant Randolph Scott, an actor that successfully performs the typical sheriff or cowboy in these movies. His characters have usually the same characteristics of a honest man with a past. Angela Lansbury is an actress that I used to see ad an old lady, and is it nice to see her with thirty year-old only. Michael Pate, Warner Anderson and John Emery perform great villains. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Obrigado a Matar" ("Forced to Kill")


This is really no lesser an achievement than the renowned Randolph Scott/Budd Boetticher Westerns; then again, director Lewis was no slouch (for he made his fair share of minor classics)!

Scott's role is typical  a legendary marshal involved in a HIGH NOON (1952)-type situation, where he's practically left alone to clean up a town riddled with corruption and violence  but the underrated actor invests it with warmth, humor, tenacity and a quiet dignity. The star, then, is supported by a most excellent cast: Angela Lansbury (a fine actress but a rather unlikely chanteuse), James Bell (a usurped town leader), Jean Parker (an ageing belle and the latter's wife), Wallace Ford (predictably in the role of the reliable town doctor), Ruth Donnelly (as Scott's gracious elderly housekeeper), Jeanette Nolan (as the wife of a revenge-seeking ex-con whom Scott has killed in self-defense), and an interesting trio of villains  powerful boss Warner Anderson (who also fancies himself a ladies' man and, in fact, strikes up relationships with both Parker and Lansbury throughout), shifty but nervous gambler John Emery and smooth gunslinger Michael Pate (making for a worthy opponent to Scott).

The above-average script by Kenneth Gamet (an in-joke shows the calendar in the hero's room as being sponsored by Gamet's Vegetable Compound!) gives characterization reasonable depth: Scott and Lansbury are married but she had left him because of his dangerous job (a situation which she has to live through again now); Scott tells Donnelly that he hears The Beast (which symbolizes the scourge of the town) every morning until it's replaced by church-bells at the end of the picture. The highlights  most of the action seems to take place in and around one particular saloon, though in a montage we're shown that Anderson's 'protection' extends to many others in town  include an energetic and brutal fistfight between the hero and a dim-witted giant (who subsequently joins forces with him), an astonishing shoot-out two-thirds of the way involving Scott and Pate which ends with the former left for dead, and the splendid extended climax. On top of it all is the pleasing cinematography by an expert in color lensing, Ray Rennahan.


Randolph Scott made a ton of Westerns and you could almost always rely on them to be well-acted, intelligently written and a bit better than the genre. While this film certainly doesn't stand out among these many films, it certainly is good and worthwhile--particularly if you've become a Randolph Scott fan like me.

I liked how this film didn't deny that Scott was getting older. He plays a sheriff with a fast gun who realizes that he's made a lot of enemies by enforcing the law over the years--and his reflexes aren't exactly as good as they used to be. I loved how he took a nap by locking himself in one of his back jail cells--so that no one could sneak up on him! Scott deals with a couple angry jerks looking to take him down near the beginning of the film. I particularly loved the barber's chair scene--I wasn't too surprised by it but it was handled well. However, now he has something different to deal with--a greedy and amoral gambler who is determined to get rid of the sheriff once and for all. So, he brings in a hired gun who soon shoots Scott. Now this is the only real problem with the film. It expects us to believe that a gunman who hates Scott shoots him from about fifteen feet and the bullet somehow glances off Scott's head! Even I could have made this shot, and I'm no gunslinger! So you are expected to believe this and not question this plot line for the rest of the film to work. However, I was able to temporarily suspend disbelief and liked what happened next.

The acting and writing are fine and Scott is helped by having some excellent support in the film. It's a good old fashioned story about one man defying the odds--somewhat like HIGH NOON or RIO BRAVO. I especially liked how it all ended.

Memorable and worth seeing, though look for the Scott films directed by Budd Boetticher to see his best film or his final film that was directed by Sam Peckinpah.


"This town is like a wild animal in chains, Molly," says Marshal Calem Ware to his landlady while she fries his bacon and eggs for breakfast. "It doesn't fight back right away. It just lies there and snarls, waiting for a chance to pounce on you."

"Be careful, Calem," is Molly's helpful advice.

A Lawless Street is the story of Calem Ware (Randolph Scott) and his determination to bring law and order to Medicine Bend. Unknown to Ware, there is a faction in town determined to run things wide open. Money -- big money -- is involved. This means Ware has to be taken care of. A hired killer with a draw as fast as Calem's might be the answer. Complicating matters for Ware is the arrival of Tally Dickerson (Angela Lansbury), a music hall singer engaged to play with her troupe at the town's new opera house. Nine years ago the two were man and wife, then Tally left him. They're still married. "I didn't know what it was like for a man to make his living with his gun," Tally tells Caleb when they meet again, "walking the streets a living target. I died a little more each day and I died more at night." Even Lansbury can't do much with lines like that.

The movie is packed with such poor writing that we don't believe a minute of it. The script is full of characters who tell each who they are and what motivates them, instead of demonstrating this. At frequent intervals an out-of-breath minor character rushes up to Caleb to announce another crisis is at hand. Thank goodness we have Scott's steadfastness to believe in and the smiling sleaziness of John Emery, playing one of the bad guys, to enjoy. The writing is so poor it makes even a fine actress like Angela Lansbury sound like someone from a daytime soap opera. We have Lansbury singing and dancing once, but I'd swear her singing was dubbed, a strange decision.

Although I thought the movie might be interesting with the odd duo of a 57-year-old Randolph Scott with the 30-year-old Angela Lansbury, the pairing seemed uncomfortable and unlikely. The film's modest pleasures come from a handful of long-time character actors, such as Wallace Ford, who died a memorable death in a steam room in Blood on the Sun, Ruth Donnelly, always good in many movies as the often irascible but good-hearted motherly type, and, of course, Emery. I always admired the way he tried to put the moves on Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound.


This is the title of the German version translated into English. That is the way in the sixties German audience could have been attracted to a western movie. This is for me in some respects an outstanding western. I would like to explain why. American western movies are often not very realistic . I give you some examples: 1. heroic main characters are often good looking, handsome (which is not really what disturbs me) and know how to use a gun or knife 2. the characters are mostly simple, straight-forward, there is the good and there is the evil 3. the movies make us believe that the wild west bustled with a few reasonable and righteous people and astonishingly out of 200 adult inhabitants of a town, 190 are cowards or villains or lynchers and of course miserable people or everything altogether which one could find in the gutter of humankind (outside town the rate is a little more favourable)- something I cannot believe,because I do not want to believe, that we Europeans only sent the sludge of our civilization over the ocean. 4.as for shooting! Shootings in American western movies! A world in itself. I wonder whether writers, directors are aware that this is always the most unrealistic part in their films. In every western movie you see somebody shooting with an old muzzle loader 5 miles and kick the rider from the horse; in every movie you see cowboys shooting from the hip, without aiming on a silver dollar thrown into the air, you guess, they hit, not to speak that villains do not get their opponents although they fire from close distance, let us say 20 centimeters, hundreds of broadsides, while the sheriff is shooting back with one single shot between the eyes of the five bandits. This reminds me to war films, where the American guys are outnumbered by their enemies who have a tremendous arsenal of weapons which turn out to be completely useless whereas the American guy swiftly (and heroically) kills with his Colt a whole batallion. What is this nonsense for? Life is not like High Noon. But sometimes it is good to believe it, right? I stop the list here to come to the "man like a devil". What an incredible scene! The sheriff has a shootout with the villain and what happens? I could hardly believe my eyes. The sheriff is felled - although not deadly. The gangster prevails! When it comes to the second shooting the sheriff is clever enough not to risk a fair duel.Right so! That is something I can take. Can You remember the scene where Rob Roy desperately holds the sabre of the opponent who is going to kill him in the next moment with his bare hand?! The big man has no chance in the fair fight against the small but capable adversary, but he has a helping idea. That is how you have to go against the rat pack of this world, which is often more powerful, more skilled. This western movie has some astonishing aspects and therefore I honour him with 8 asterics. By the way Randolph Scott is in his western movies always already a senior. It is the same in true life. Do not expect too much from the youngsters,usually they wet their trousers in difficult situations!


Frank A. Cappello, writer and director of He Was a Quiet Man, is a man with something to prove, having written the hilariously bad Hulk Hogan vehicle Suburban Commando, and directing the wholly disappointing Constantine. He Was a Quiet Man, whilst not an unqualified success, is one of the underseen gems of 2007.

The film is essentially an amalgam of A History of Violence, Falling Down, and Office Space, with a pile of quirks to boot. Bob Maconel (the hilariously disguised Christian Slater), a despondent office worker, decides that he is going to perform a murderous rampage at his work office, yet before he can do so, a fellow maniac beats him to it. However, Bob, in protecting the one person that he cares about, the beautiful Vanessa (Elisha Cuthbert), guns down the assailant, and inadvertently becomes a hero.

Bob is unashamedly similar to Michael Douglas' "D-Fens" character from Falling Down, kitted out in a shirt and tie, and even further, seeks moments of reflection in the great outdoors, although in this instance, there are no Mexican gangsters attempting to rob him. The similarities do, thankfully, stop there  this film is born of something else, with its CGI traffic whizzing by at astronomical speeds as Bob dawdles along, illustrating the drudgery of Bob's life without an ounce of subtlety. Whilst the film as a whole is overly reliant on visual curiosities such as this, the animated, talking fish which eggs Bob on to kill his colleagues is delightfully colourful, and mildly amusing to boot.

As one can gather from the above paragraph, He Was a Quiet Man is very surreal in a hilarious sort of way. Essentially, if you gave David Lynch a funny bone, you'd probably end up with something remarkably similar to this. Despite the aforementioned reliance on visual effects, the film is unquestionably carried by the barely-recognisable Slater who, despite his recent collaboration with tragically awful director Uwe Boll, proves that he is still worth something in Hollywood, with comic timing that is nothing short of spot on.

Bob is essentially revered by everyone around him for his "heroic" actions  he is given a new job, his colleagues no longer think of him as a schmuck, and the sexy office bitch wants to have sex with him, yet the film's real point of contention is Cuthbert's character. Vanessa is left paralysed following the shooting, wishing that she was dead, and moreover, she wishes that Bob, who saved her life, would kill her.

A surprisingly understated (until the climatic scenes) conundrum surfaces as an aside to this drama  Bob still finds those around him utterly repugnant, and he considers whether or not to carry out what the other gunner started, as well as putting Vanessa out of her misery, of course. The film carries these questions very well  it is at times predictable, and occasionally not so, yet it never ceases to lose its sense of intrigue. The film's examination of the way in which humans operate is not intricate, and verges on syrupy at times, yet what is most entertaining about He Was a Quiet Man is its surreal spirit. Furthermore, even in its sweetness, the film explores the lives of disabled persons with a surprising level of insight and honesty . It may be exaggerated, and at times, even humorous, yet its approach is undeniably refreshing, particularly in relation to how the disabled manage to still engage in an active and healthy sex life.

He Was a Quiet Man never remains comfortable, constantly fidgeting and posing new questions for both ourselves and Bob to consider. The film follows through with an insane close, yet it is the most manically reasoned, and therefore, perhaps the most realistic end possible (although term "realism" is a very tenuous one in a film as twisted as this). The ending comes very abruptly, and little is done to satisfy viewer curiosity, yet we are given the vital answers, even if they aren't wholly satisfying, and are a tad questionable. We are left to ponder several things, yet when the preceding ninety minutes are so intentionally devoid of poignance, the film may simply leave your mind as the final frame does.

Christian Slater's latest and greatest effort (at least for a while) is A History of Violence without the graphic violence, Falling Down without the social commentary, and Office Space without the sagacious humour. Yes, it is a blend of all three films, at the cost of diluting each of them. The film's worst crime may be never allowing us to particularly care for Bob (or anyone) as much as we did for D-Fens in Schumacher's film, yet even despite its relative superficiality, He Was a Quiet Man remains a thoroughly entertaining, inventive and quirky film that will have nihilists the world over utterly dumbfounded (myself included). Elisha Cuthbert pulls out a career best (in that she is above tolerable, and even "good"), William H Macy plays the corporate yes-man with glee, and Slater, with great aid from his fabulous make-up department, looks and acts with great hilarity. It is unfortunate that this film, embracing its flaws as it so flagrantly does, has yet to find a large audience, and as such, it instantly becomes one of the indie staples of 2007.


Well, by camera work I really mean all visual effects as well as the cinematography, set design... it's a visual treat. The effects used to dramatize Bob McConnell's sense of isolation and loneliness were intriguing.

Also great acting by Mr. Slater, as usual. I like this guy's work.

It's nice to see William Macy in a different type of role than I usually see him in, but anyone could have done that turn -- not much there for him to do, but he ably supports, which is a fine thing, since that's what his role here should be...

In some ways, it reminded me of Fight Club.

Saw this on an airplane today, and now I'm kicking back and looking it up.

I quite enjoyed it.


He Was a Quiet Man draws on one of the most morbid aspects of our society and describes it perfectly.

Christian Slater plays the quiet cubicle worker, who, abused and mistreated by his coworkers, decides to shoot up the office. Fortunately for him, another man in his position takes aim first, and Slater takes him down with the bullets he had originally meant for his coworkers.

After the aftermath, his coworkers whom he loathed, treat him as a hero; and the object of his desire, played by Elisha Cuthbert, is paralyzed from a bullet wound. While Cuthbert initially enlists Slater to help her end her life, the two eventually form a bond that would have never otherwise occurred.

The movie leads us down a path of insanity and through the surreal, morbid, and sickened world of Slater's character almost flawlessly; and delivers a thought provoking, eye opening take on the mind of a psychotic would be murderer.


I rarely see a movie that I enjoy as much as I enjoyed this film. It is just so gorgeous on so many levels, it has a very intriguing plot, and a twist at the end that leaves you with a very shocked brain. There's not too much that I can say without giving away much of the plot, but it's fair to say that if you watch this movie, you will NOT be disappointed. It is just so captivating, it has a wonderful soundtrack that matches the movie perfectly, and the ending is so sad, yet so imaginative. The cast displays an amazing performance and the camera work is quite complex and stylistic. In my opinion, the best movie of the "dark humor" genre to be exhaled from someone's mind yet. The only reason I couldn't give this a full 10 stars is because of the fact that it may be a little confusing to some, due to the fact that it is left very open-ended. 9/10


What goes through the mind of the office drone that snaps and shoots up the place? What drives a person like that? Come on, we've all seen the reports "He Was a Quiet Man, he mostly kept to himself..." Going Postal is a commonplace term that is known by anyone, and certainly a feeling that can be understood from anybody that has ever had a thankless office job.

The world has changed, everything is shades of grey and certain people, who go through a lonely life without being understood, and while constantly being kicked around have a tendency to fade into the background.

Unless they make themselves known in some way.

Any which way you slice it, that's what this movie is about. The Quiet Loner, put upon by the inequities of the office bully, forever ignored by the bosses, the pretty girl, you name it.

Until, that special event. The one that changes everything.

What if... instead of shooting up the office, somebody else beats him to the punch, and he becomes a hero by accident instead? While not perfect, He Was a Quiet Man provides some powerful performances, including a knockout by Christian Slater who truly becomes the role. Even Elisha Cuthbert, who is generally speaking, not exactly an acting heavyweight in my book, does a fine job.

The soundtrack leaves a little to be desired, and some of the cgi is a bit fake looking, but on the whole this is a character study that is well worth watching that, while leaving an ambiguous and somewhat dystopian ending is well worth checking out.

Cappello's film is a little unnerving, but very compelling and worth a look.


I've never been a fan of Christian Slater although I've never been a detractor either. This movie turned any opinion I had of him on its head. A well scripted film, beautifully acted (By Slater, Macy and Cuthbert) from start to finish. Slater is a desperate man ready to go to ultimate lengths to right a world he sees as wrong. As can be seen in the trailer, he's beaten to the punch and inadvertently becomes a hero. It's at this point that the film begins in earnest. It doesn't try and get too clever as some movies tend do with a story of this ilk (sometimes to the detriment of the movie). The story was strong enough to carry me all the way through to the end. Buy it, go see it, rent it.


In Los Angeles, the lonely and paranoid Bob Maconel (Christian Slater) is a complete loser: at home, in spite of living in the same address for five years, his next door neighbor ignores his existence and he only talks to his alter-ego golden fish in his aquarium; in the office at ADD company, he is abused and humiliated by his colleagues and nobody has ever asked an opinion to him or invited him to a happy-hour. Every now and then Bob imagines shooting five loath coworkers or blowing up ADD's building. When his next cubicle colleague has a breakdown and shoots his colleagues, Bob kills him with five shots and becomes a popular local hero. His boss Gene Shelby (William H. Macy) moves him from his cubicle to an office in the last floor and makes him the VP of Creative Thinking as the substitute for Vanessa Parks (Elisha Cuthbert), who has become quadriplegic with one bullet in her spine. Bob visits Vanessa in the hospital and after the initial rejection, she asks him to help her to commit suicide. However, they become close and Bob falls in love for Vanessa. But the mistreatment in the past and lack of confidence of the quiet Bob haunt him, driving him to an insanity process.

"He Was a Quiet Man" is an impressively dark and morbid character study of a paranoid man after years of humiliation and loneliness. Most of the characters in the office are usually found in most companies, from the sweet woman that uses sex to climb positions to the apple-polisher; the abusive to the abused worker. Therefore, there is a total credibility in the universe of the employees of ADD. The underrated Christian Slater gives a fantastic performance with the quiet and ignored Bob Maconel and his character is very well developed, slightly recalling Michael Douglas in "Falling Down". The extremely dark humor may be unpleasant to some viewers but I found this movie a gem to be discovered. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "A Fúria" ("The Rage")


...that a human mind is capable of creating such intriguing plot - so terrifying and captivating this movie is. Frank Capello is obviously a man of genius. But he is not nice and gentle to his audience. The movie is sharp-straight, honest and pretty cruel to a person watching it. It doesn't compromise. Don't expect it to comply with general drama movie rules.

*** BE AWARE OF SPOILERS BELOW ***

After you ve seen 50% of it or so you think it's pretty common drama, quite predictable and possibly happily ending one. Well, its not. Not at all. And so shockingly not.

Cast is perfect. I would never think Slater could fit into the role of Bob. W.Macy would fit better, I thought. But these thoughts faded away.

The movie is not open-ended despite what some people say. You just have to think harder than you usually do while watching a regular movie. Be more attentive or watch it again.

Capello makes you think. If you want to know what really happened analyze the details. There are answers.

I give 9 out of 10, because Capello rudely and savagely ruined my hopes for the better ending :)


"He Was a Quiet Man" is perhaps the most original and unpredictable movie I've ever seen. If you're looking for something "normal", you should probably look elsewhere.

A story of an extremely lonely, put-upon, disturbed man who desperately wants to be Somebody. Christian Slater plays this man absolutely brilliantly. In watching his performance, I kept thinking "Where is Christian Slater?" ... Well, he's not even in the neighborhood. Well done, guy!

The direction is absolutely amazing: colorful, imaginative, darkly funny, and surreal. Cubicles, and hummingbirds, and talking fish, oh my!

While the film is not particularly emotionally satisfying (to say the least), on the cerebral and aesthetic level, it delivers big time.

"He Was a Quiet Man" answers the musical question: "Now maniacs will think twice before going crazy."

Yessiree.


I came into this title knowing absolutely nothing about it, besides the fact that Christian Slater was the lead. What I watched was nothing short of fantastic.

We are first introduced to Bob (Slater), a man on the verge (or possibly in the thrall of) of a total breakdown. Sort of reminds you of Milton from Office Space, but taken so far over the edge, there's just no looking back. He's mistreated at work, he hates his job, and he wants it all to end.

The thing that really got me attached to this film was the observations of the inner workings of Bob. He talks to his goldfish, and for crying out loud, the thing talks back. This is obviously an unstable man. His stabilizer though, found in the "victim", Vanessa (played amazingly well by Elisha Cuthbert), reminded me so much of Carrie-Ann Moss from Memento. She carries him, but teaches him to be a stronger man through essential "ball-busting".

The script was perfect for each of the lead roles. Both Cuthbert and especially Slater shocked me to no end with their talent. This was Slater's ideal role. Director Frank A. Cappello regained some status with this. It was quite the achievement. It's unfortunate that it had such a small release (I would've never heard of it if it wasn't for the fact that I got an advance DVD). It's going to go overlooked for many. Look it up at your local video store, folks, this will be worth it!!!


Human perceive things in most wonderfully creative and erogenous ways. That's why a flawed art can be just as effective, if not more, in sending your conscious through a range of emotions so fast and furious that reason have no chance in hell to ever catch up. This film is one of those flawed art that through its deranged and surreal vision and narratives, you live the love and pain of Bob Maconel, a quiet man who was not so quiet within.

The presentation is often cartoonish and stereotypical, yet the emotion that was conveyed are often bloody raw to a fault that you just can't simply escape. Bob is a troubled man who's life is as boring as it is tormenting. We don't know his past and how he became what he is. The sad truth is that the only colorful and interesting thing in his life is his homicidal and suicidal anguish, the held up energy and intensity that dramatically contrasted his drab and introverted appearance, until one day, he let it all loose, in a sort of unexpected way.

In a society full of able thinkers and feelers competing for limited opportunities, there are those who express in terms, those who express against the terms and those who are simply ignored. Bob is an ignored soul. But the trouble is, being ignored doesn't diminish his ability to think and feel. Bob gave us a chance to explore the mind of those who's life are often invisible until they made the front page news, with increasingly frequent occurrence in today's society. Only here, we are not only presented with the dark and ugly side of it, but also the vulnerably romantic side as well. Through all of its oddity and obscurity, we get a glimpse of its human quality, and were left scarred by its sheer beauty.

I can only describe the style of directing as creative honesty, as honesty is in such short supply in today's media. What was expressed outwardly is exaggerated in order to stay true with what locks inside a person's mind. For this alone, I was over joyed by the experience.

Go see it, with a understanding mind and compassionate soul. Let the range of emotion washes over you, be it pity or wonderment, don't haste to judge. Just let it haunt you for a while.


This was a very surreal movie that had everything for the avid film fan. The performances from Cuthbert and slater were top draw and the script was excellent culminating on my opinion with a below par end. I feel i would have given a 10 if there had been a little more thought in the last 5-10 minutes.

The story revolves around Slater, he has a very mundane life and is treated like a piece of dirt by his work colleagues. He works in a cubicle and spends all day planning to literally shoot the office up until just as you think he will another colleague does. He then saves Cuthberts life and this is where the story really begins.

There are various surreal moments, on several occasions Slater is talking to his fish and they have some witty responses. Cuthbert looks great as always but nice to see her in a movie where some acting is required, i would find it hard to criticise though as the film "the girl next door" is my favourite film of all time and Cuthbert can do no wrong. The Karaoke Scene is terrific and shows both the humour and serious message from this film.

Slaters character was another complex part of the story, you at the beginning don't really have time for him. He then starts to improve his life and his character becomes more likable but, ultimately his character goes more and more into depression and looses his trust of everyone again and you start to dislike him again.

On the whole this film will not set box office records alight but with all the rubbish rolling out of the studios recently this is a little gem that has snuck out. I would definitely recommend you see it at your earliest opportunity.


Only one reviewer "got it": ppmaker from Russian Federation

----------------SPOILER ALERT----------------------

It's worth watching the directors comments on his alternative endings to see what the ending he used means, and what the other endings he considered could have meant.

As PPMAKER said - did anything actually happen? The ending that was used leaves that rather wide open. The alternate endings leave you with other possibilities. Once you understand what the ending is telling you - those little nagging plot doubts you had during the movie are all resolved.

Great movie - enjoyed it greatly and enjoyed the soundtrack.


This film is not bad visually. It breaks no new ground, but it pulls off some music-video style imagery in a way that fits nicely into the film. Christian Slater's acting is actually pretty good. But the plot stinks. It's the same tired 'this is all a hallucinatory dream sequence in the moment before death' crap that ruins so many films that almost make a statement, and then, at the last minute, confess to being delusions. If nothing past the first fifteen minutes of a film is 'real', and the main character dies at the end of a film with the realization that the things you just saw were all some literature professor's self-referential wet dream of metaphor and allegory, then what is this film worth? The whole thing is pointless. Would have made a fair enough five page short story for a freshman college English class. At a community college. On film, it's just disappointing.


It seems that every once and a while, an occasionally brilliant film will catch my attention in the late hours of the night (or the early hours of the morning, as it was in my case); I found that film in "He Was a Quiet Man," writer-director Frank A. Cappello's brilliantly acted, smartly written satire about that unlikely hero whose "heroic" act may not have been so heroic, and in fact masked an inner rage that may actually make him the villain.

A seriously understated Christian Slater stars as Bob Maconel, a frustrated office worker whose first words in the picture have him counting the amount of bullets in his gun and who his intended targets are going to be. Bob lives alone and works as a drone in one of those big technology firms where it's never made clear what it is that they actually do, or what everyone's jobs are. Bob's day-to-day existence consists of him feeding his fish (who he talks to and they occasionally give him bad advice, fueling his murderous rage), going to work, rarely being acknowledged by his neighbors, being picked on by his co-workers, and working up the courage to go on his deadly shooting spree.

Well, just when Bob finally gets the courage to do the deed, he is beaten to the punch by a fellow enraged office worker. In the middle of the carnage, Bob and the shooter manage to strike up a casual conversation. When Bob asks why he's not going to shoot him, the man replies, "Because you're the only person in this office who's more pathetic than I am." Bob takes this personally and guns down the assailant. Afterward, he rushes to the side of the office beauty, Vanessa Parks (Elisha Cuthbert), who was seriously wounded in the attack and is the only person Bob ever really liked. Her smile could "light up a room," we're told throughout the film.

Bob is then branded a hero. The people he despised are now his best friends, including the office bully and the office slut, who would have never given the time of day before. (She gets her comeuppance in one particular scene that is all of hilarious, disgusting, and disturbing.) He gets a promotion, a brand-new office next to the big boss, Mr. Shelby (William H. Macy), and the company car. His neighbors finally acknowledge him; when one of them asks when did he move in, Bob replies, "I've lived here five years." He soon begins to visit Vanessa in the hospital, whose spine was severed by a bullet and is now a quadriplegic. She begs him to finish what the shooter started. When he relents, that's when the two begin a tentative relationship that begins to calm the deadly monster lurking within him. Later on in the film, however, troubling questions begin to arise about Bob's sanity and his grip on his new reality that he has found himself in.

As many have mentioned, "He Was a Quiet Man," seems to combine elements of past similar-themed features including "Falling Down," "Office Space" and "A History of Violence," plus a few of the artistically weird storytelling aesthetics of a David Lynch picture. Similarities seem to end fairly early in the picture after Bob first becomes a hero and a media darling. It seems that when you finally have a grasp on where it's all headed, the picture does a 360 and winds up going right back to where it started, both metaphorically and literally.

Slater was pretty good in this film; his performance here worked from his first seconds on screen, his character of office drone Bob Maconel combining elements of the main characters from the films I mentioned earlier and hitting all the right emotive notes. For years, he's been hounded by his Jack Nicholson obsession and I think here he seems to have finally come into his own as a seriously demented loner who is quickly losing his grip on reality.

While by no means one of my favorite actresses, it was a delight to see Elisha Cuthbert in a role where her gorgeous looks are only part of her performance and are not THE performance; here is a beautiful woman who freely admits to using her sexuality as a means of getting ahead in life and now she's been reduced to nothing - a fact that she freely admits to having accepted - and finally having to take things extra slow because her most valuable asset has been taken away from her: her own body. Maybe I'm overreaching or being overly critical - I did like her in "The Girl Next Door" (2004) - she can act, it's that I haven't liked too many of her film projects since '04. Anyway, when she's confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, for me, it's almost like stepping back to truly appreciate a fine piece of art. Only then, is she truly beautiful.

"He Was a Quiet Man" is not a perfect film. The script is prone to occasional slips of the pen in certain places, but the performances (especially by Christian Slater and Elisha Cuthbert) and Cappello's artistic direction and grip on the finer points of the material make up for it. "He Was a Quiet Man" is one of those brilliant movies that forces us to look at ourselves and see what makes us tick. It's funny, it's dramatic and it's also occasionally quite disturbing, but it is an example of all-around great, late-night fanfare that deserves more respect from the movie-going public.

9/10


I really liked this film - it's one of the few films I've seen that has provoked me to think. Unlike some reviewers, I think this film is coherent, streamlined, and finishes with a fitting climax.

The film explores the dichotomy of disability and enablement, suggesting that, ironically, enablement comes about through dependence rather than independence. Bob, the tragic figure in this movie, is shown to be unable to genuinely allow others into his world, and this is ultimately his downfall. Correspondingly, his female interest discovers that it is only when she is forced to depend on someone else that her life truly begins.

Spoiler ahead: The film's conclusion is really the fitting endpoint of the tragedy that has been going on since the film's beginning: Bob becomes his own victim... Like a goldfish that refuses to be fed from outside the bowl, he has barricaded himself into his own world, and thus cannot survive.

This is a great film - and, apparently, as tragically misunderstood as Bob feels himself to be...


A movie with serious and poignant themes that isn't afraid to let out the full force of human emotion and confusion. Brilliant in its ability to draw parallels between the mind of a very "sick" individual and our own lives. Various unpleasant modes of motivation are also explored in the screenplay via archetypal imagery and polarity. More than entertainment, the movie is likely to touch a chord in the psyche of even the most jaded part of oneself, encouraging hope for change, while at the same time exploring the inevitable outcome pursuant to the present course as delineated by the characters personas. Let me try saying it this way. Intense themes of alienation, lust, power, anger and confusion are painted with broad and overlapping strokes in this powerhouse of a movie. The canvas of the screen time and again extrudes into the mind of the viewer through imagery, tone, familiarity and by the commentary of a fish. Don't over look the fish. Likely should have gotten a nomination for some screenplay award, and was, well overlooked. And then there is the hummingbird. We aren't really asked to look to deeply at these two pivotal characters in the film, yet they act as a prism regarding the various themes and characters in the film; arguably helping to blend and mix them so we can more easily identify with the film itself. Then there is the use of black and white at the very beginning of the film, one of the rare times I felt that it created more than mood or atmosphere; the footage there was poetic and beautiful. And then the descent into the everyday. Bound to continue to work on the mind, and possibly the psyche, days after viewing. I'd see it again with a friend, or as a film night kind of thing. I think that it would be interesting to listen to what other people thought of it, how they interpreted it, and also to listen to the naysayers of which there likely would be few. It deals with various taboos, and foul motives. Not an upbeat movie, I give it thumbs up.


Frankly I was shocked by just how good Christian Slater was in this film and trust me Christian Slater and good are definitely two words I never thought I would put in the same sentence. So yes you can say I was very presently surprised, I remember first hearing about this film and the quality reviews it had been getting and I was a bit reluctant when hearing just who was included in the cast. As much as I was surprised by Christian Slater I felt the exact opposite about Elisha Cuthbert, how she continues to get roles amazes me, I guess there are directors and producers that are just so mesmerized by they way she looks that they are fooled into thinking she is anything but god awful. Plus, was anyone really fooled by the obvious use of a body double in her nude scene. If she doesn't want to do the scene then just don't do it, or even be a little creative with you shot choices, instead we get one of the most unconvincing body double shots ever filmed. Anyway, enough on the cast, this film is very unique in it's story and the way it's director chooses to tell it, some very interesting special effects are used throughout and in some very unconventional ways. The films final act is by far it's weakest point, a cop out ending to a film that deserved better.


When I was looking through the collection at Hollywood Video looking for a rental, I came across He Was a Quiet Man, I'm not sure why, but I picked up the film and just read what it was about. I had never heard of it before, but I enjoy Christian Slater, Elisha Cuthbert, and William H. Macy on screen, they're great actors and then I read on the summary "Office Space meets Taxi Driver", lol, I had to see this movie. So I watched it last night, I honestly have to say that I am taken back, this was not only a good movie, but had such knock out performances! Christian Slater, I always liked him in movies, but this performance, I am going to be honest, has to be the best of his career, I barely even recognized him, he was incredible. He makes Bob Maconel, his character, so sympathetic and understandable, that he holds the entire movie so well with class.

Bob Maconel is your average working American citizen, unfortunately, he doesn't have the best looks, he lives alone(without the companionship of his talking gold fish), he's taken advantage of at work, and also has a huge crush on a beautiful co-worker, Venessa Parks who would never give him the time of day. Bob has just had it, one day he has a gun and just wants to go crazy in the office and shoot everyone, but guess what? Someone beat him to it, Bob shoots the guy, making him look like a hero, he also sees Venessa on the floor and saves her life, but she unfortunately is paralyzed. They start an interesting relationship, one that could make or break Bob's sanity once and for all.

I seriously recommend this movie, it's definitely one of the most interesting films I have seen this year. The way the film was made and edited, at times was a little off, but seriously, it's the awesome performances that really make the film. Christian and Elisha really become their roles and are just incredible together, the scene where Venessa is paralyzed and wants to "please" Bob, just his reaction and her tear, the scene was so heart breaking, but touching. You'll have to see what I mean, but trust me, there are many great scenes in He Was A Quiet Man, this is a must see film.

9/10


One of the best performances of the year (2007), Christian Slater's acting is superb and in fact spectacular. Completely disposing of his own personal character, Mr. Slater has been able to transform himself entirely in this very performance labored production as a deranged employee. Heavy elements of BRAZIL (1985) come to mind in this updated version of contemporary fantasy-reality of the harsh facts of corporate existence and the alienation from the human compassion in today's civilization. This production incorporates startling relevant human relation issues that pertain to today's violent world. With the apparent increasing media attention to shootings in malls and schools by individuals whose behavior has bewildered America, this movie begins to shed some light on this tragic existence of some individuals in our Country. This innovative production value with a new fresh look together with an intense drama script come together to make this one of the best movies of the year. Except perhaps for an ending that could have gone in a number of different directions, this movie is the complete package for emotional engagement, dazzling visual images, this movie is a must see for anybody who is concerned about humanity in today's modern world. Nine out of Ten Stars.


Christian Slater is impressive here and the juxtaposition of real and surreal sequences works well. William H. Macy, as always, paints a minor character vividly, as does Elisha Cuthbert.

Not much of a movie for Adam Sandler fans or the myriad viewers who just want to chuckle and half-sleep.

This is a second-thought sort of film --- one that comes back at you. The creativity and uniqueness is not apparent at first, but brings belated fascination.

The camera work is superb and the screenplay, borrowing just a tad from Ambrose Bierce (as many have), is a true work of art.

Directors don't get enough credit - so kudos here too.

All-in-all a great effort, well worth seeing.


HE WAS A QUIET MAN echoes the all too familiar news item of irrational killings in public places - here, in this country, by seemingly 'normal indistinguishable people'. Writer/director Frank A. Cappello has a good grasp on his subject matter and probably intended the rather slow movement of the film to underline the 'ordinary' situations that in a flash become extraordinary. And he has a fine cast to demonstrate his thoughts.

Bob Maconel (Christian Slater in fine distorting makeup) is a nerd, an ordinary geek who checks numbers form his sterile cubicle in a massive corporation, heckled by the 'fast guys' like Scott Harper (Jamison Jones). He loathes his life, his crumby house and unkempt lawn, and most of all the loathes the people with whom he works - except for one Vanessa (Elisha Cuthbert) who has a 'smile that lights up a room', but pays no attention to the geeky Bob. Bob is deranged, talks to his goldfish at home (and they answer back!), and plans to kill the most offensive of his fellow workers. But in the adjacent cubicle there is a like mind who beats him to the show and one morning opens fire killing five people and wounding Vanessa with a bullet to her spine that leaves her paralyzed: Bob serendipitously uses his own gun to kill the assailant and becomes a hero for the corporation.

Though Bob is unchanged in appearance or outlook he is elevated to VP of Creative Thinking under the head boss Gene Shelby (William H. Macy). He visits Vanessa in the hospital, suffers her tantrum at being a quadriplegic, but finally is called back to her bedside and sweet-talked into being her hero life-saving guardian - and more. Once Bob feels needed and perhaps 'loved' by Vanessa he begins to change, only to have unfortunate reminders of reality enter and alter his life yet again.

Though the subject matter is rather terrifying, Cappello elects to present this tale as black humor. In the hands of less competent actors it would like have been a dud, but with Christian Slater's finely nuanced performance the film takes on a powerful sheen. The line between madness and normalcy is a thin one indeed and there are many disturbing lessons to be gained from watching this small but well-done film. Grady Harp


He was a quiet man features Bob Maconel (Christian Slater) who is a displeased man working in an office with orthodox 9-5 routine. He is a very lonely individual who gets bullied by his superiors and ignored by his co-workers; he is nerdy looking, and seems to have no charisma which makes him an instant easy target. This leaves him with no options to allow orders from people and let them treat him like a servant. This has brought him to a breaking point where he feels his life is no longer worth living and attempts a killing spree.

However, a fellow co-worker named Coleman beats Maconel to the 'job' whilst going through a similar experience of his own. This occurrence leaves Maconel rising from a zero to a hero. Maconel manages to prevent Vanessa (Elisha Cuthbert) from dying and shooting killer Coleman! Vanessa is left almost completely paralysed and can no longer maintain her job. The job is appointed to Maconel by Gene Shelby (William H. Macy). Maconel receives Vanessa's company car and an office with a view  something he's always wanted. People treat him differently after the incident and take interest in his life, as he gets invited to parties and the opportunity to share his ideas with the company.

Initially, Vanessa was angry with Maconel for saving her life  as she felt she would be better off dead than being disabled. Maconel has fantasised being with Vanessa for years and still likes her the same way despite her condition. This brings Maconel and Vanessa together as they form a relationship. All of this seems like a perfect life but it leaves Maconel completely overwhelmed and he can't handle the situation he's in. Maconel starts to question himself and he finds himself in a situations that is changing for the worst.

The music used in this film works very appropriately and is very well timed. I like it when I'm not distracted by a popular song in a film and "He was a Quiet Man" doesn't suffer from uniqueness. There is a few times where Maconel narrates, and I have to admit Christian Slater's narration is pretty good. He gives a credible performance as he does with any film role that he portrays.

My only one complaint was the running time at 95 minutes. I finished the film quite simply wanting more and the plot twist towards the end of the film seemed a little unoriginal and predicable. The film was written and directed by Frank A. Cappello. I have always respected authors who direct their own films. I suppose he was pensiveness of how he wanted the film to look and didn't want any other director to change that from him. This film had a very limited budget, approximately in the region of $600,000. There was no studio behind it, making it a strictly independent production. It had theatre showings in a few cities for one week each and the main release was on DVD in USA on January 15, 2008.

So basically, the film is well worth watching but it suffers towards the end  I felt it was capable of a lot more as there isn't a moment of screen wasted time. It is an enjoyable film to watch - but you need to pay attention to understand the plot twists.


I love a LOT of movies made during this period (late 60s through mid 70s) and I really like both Julie Christie and George C. Scott. And a lot of people liked "Petulia" so I really wanted to see it and like it.

But this movie was a big disappointment for me. The fragmented plot and the noisy editing style seemed to be very much on purpose, and though I can enjoy non-linear narrative (e.g., Tarantino), the style seemed to be the thing director wanted to "say". (If I had walked in during the middle of the movie, I might have thought it a TV commercial, for just about any product you could think of.) I could tell that "Petulia" was supposed to be about people not being able to connect with each other to the point of total estrangement, but I don't really want to become as frustrated as the characters I am watching. The movie runs amok with cryptic symbolism to the point where the symbols replace the characters.

*SPOILERS* Why, for example, did the martyr-kook Petulia continue to harass Archie, up until the point where she got beat to a pulp by David, whereupon Archie changed his whole attitude and began to really care for her? Or maybe that WAS the point. The Archie-symbol says to his friend he wants to feel again. So the David-symbol must beat up Petulia, make her feel, so in turn Archie can feel. Or maybe David is supposed to be a repressed homosexual who is not able to respond to admittedly beautiful Julie Christie? Richard Chamberlain was sometimes knowingly cast in these pretty-boy role types, so perhaps. I think he even gets mad once when Christie calls him "pretty". *END SPOILERS*

There were a few lovely shots of San Francisco and George C. Scott gave a good performance. But more often than not I felt like his character, yelling in frustration at Mr. Gonzales in a "foreign" language. I hated that kid, by the way, and I didn't understand why David Chamberlain gave him his watch. Oh, well. The next movie about alienation and made during this period - I am bound to love it! I couldn't get into this one.