Thanks for the memories!

As Good As It Gets

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Although, I say this movie was rather sad, the sad element, which is a major element in this movies plot, is to me completely overshadowed by the beauty the story contains at times. I am a 21 year old male, needless to say, I don't always appreciate a romantic gesture. However, this movie honestly moved me. The relationship depicted in this individuals mind is overwhelmingly deep and wonderful. Sadly, this gentleman the story follows simplistic lifestyle attributes to his complex state of mind, and this is portrayed very well in the movie. I'm not an avid movie critic or anything, just a frequent renter, but I list this in my top 5 all time easily, based on its ability to make you romanticize and wonder. Awesome, Awesome movie.

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

This movie grew on me. After about the first third of it I was practically ready to give up on it. It had a few scenes that used dark humour effectively, but was mostly just bizarre. Bob (brilliantly played by Christian Slater) was an office grunt, doing the mindless, repetitive, soul-numbingly boring work that no one wants to do but someone has to do, either looked down upon or ignored by his co-workers - a guy with no friends or social life who talks to his fish and one day brings a gun to work, ready to "go postal." In an interesting turn of events, another office grunt has exactly the same feelings, and beats Bob to the postal punch, so to speak, shooting up the office, until Bob uses his own gun to kill him. Bob suddenly finds himself the toast of the town and the office hero - everybody's friend, promoted to "Vice President of Creative Thinking" with a fancy office and big salary, and the object of the office slut's desires. There was a kind of surreal quality to all that, however, that really hadn't appealed to me very much, although the concept was interesting. Where the movie really took off, though, was in depicting the evolution of the relationship between Bob and Venessa (Elisha Cuthbert) - who was left paralyzed in the shooting. At first angry that Bob had saved her life (because she would rather be dead than paralyzed) Venessa eventually connects with Bob. They become friends, then boyfriend/girlfriend, with Bob her protector; the one who cares for her and takes care of her; her "spoon" as Mr. Shelby (William H. Macy) calls him (ie, the one who has to feed her.) The evolution of that relationship was fascinating in itself to watch. Slater did a great job as a guy who's only barely (if that) in touch with reality, while Cuthbert was effective as a beautiful woman who had used her beauty and sexuality to work her way up the ladder, only to have it all taken away from her. Once it gets going, all that would have been an interesting enough study in itself. Then comes the end.I won't give it away, but I can only say that it's one of the all time great "twist" endings that I have ever seen - and I didn't see it coming even for a moment. This is a very dark movie. At times it's funny; at times it's sad; at times it's actually very moving; it's often quite bizarre. After all that, it's a movie you definitely remember. 8/10

I was totally taken back by how good a small, low budget movie like this really is. Christian Slater is unlike any role he has ever played as Bob McConnell and was just brilliant in this role. I think he was vastly overlooked in terms of honours and seriously could have merited an Oscar nomination at the very least for this role. He plays a sad, lonely, disgruntled office worker who harbors dark thoughts about his nasty co- workers and is going to go on a shooting spree, instead he ends up being called a hero for killing another worker who beats him to the punch and shoots up his office. A lot of the film deals with his relationship with a girl he fancies who ends up shot and paralysed( Elisha Cuthbert) and how he tries to be there for her and how he finds some happiness with her while never quite getting ahead with his life. This is a great little film which is quite sad, gentle, touching and very well written and directed by Frank Capello. Although there are a few cheap effects the movie has enough great ideas and shows some good skill in film-making.There was a lot of thought put in to this and the film pays off really well and the whole point of making films like this is that it doesn't matter how much it cost to make it's the idea that counts.What makes Christian Slater so good in this movie is that he plays Bob as a misunderstood soul and a person looked down on who is not a bad person but just confused and i thought he was phenomenal in this role, if only he stretched himself and played more parts like this. Elisha Cuthbert was also very good in this and William H. Macy added good support as the slimy boss.Capello should get some bigger jobs after this because i think he did a great job in storytelling and had some vision in making this under- rated gem.I'd put it in the same category as films like Secetary, One Hour Photo, Memento and others as a cult movie with a quite indie feel to it. Check this out!