He Was a Quiet Man

Bob sits at his desk with a gun in the drawer, having decided which colleagues he will shoot. At that exact moment another employee does it first. Bob shoots the attacker and is instantly declared a hero. The company promotes him, the press interviews him, and his life becomes what he wanted. The reversal is what works. The same man with the same thoughts moves from victim to hero inside a week, and nobody thinks to ask him what he had been planning. Christian Slater plays Bob, Elisha Cuthbert the woman left paralysed in the shooting who attaches herself to him, and William H. Macy the boss. The unreliability of the narrator sits at the centre: where he actually is and what actually happened are deliberately left open. Its flaws: it never found distribution and stayed almost invisible, the look is cheap, and the game it plays at the end voids the story for some viewers. Who it is for: viewers who like dark humour and unreliable narration. Who it is not for: anyone who needs a clear resolution.