+ Best Box Office Disaster of the Year
 |
| Christian Slater looks astonished, holding a giant bomb to his chest, on this curiosity-sparking poster for Frank A. Cappello's He Was a Quiet Man, which has a tagline and title that eerily echo what neighbors and co-workers to sudden homicidal maniacs often utter in the aftermath of carnage |
Bob Maconel is a middle-aged, ugly man, who is planning a small massacre at his office workplace, when a colleague beats him to it, and he instead starts dating the paralyzed colleague hottie, whom he had saved in the attack.
He Was a Quiet Man is a psychological romance-drama written and directed by Frank A. Cappello (No Way Back (1995)). You might call it a different kind of office drama.
Christian Slater (Breaking In (2011-12)) and William H. Macy (ER (1994-09)) are really good here, but especially Elisha Cuthbert (The Ranch (2016-18)) as the paralyzed love interest make an impression and actually act here. (I have previously lampooned her for the often grotesque situations her annoying character found herself in in her most famous outing as Jack Bauer's daughter in 24 (2001-10)).)
Cappello treats the story as a playground for especially digital effects and inventiveness (such as a talking fish), and most of it works for this small, dark pearl of a film.
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Watch a TV-teaser for the film here
Cost: Unknown
Box office: 83k $
= Uncertain - but certainly a box office disaster
[He Was a Quiet Man premiered 11 March (South by Southwest Film Festival, Austin, Texas) and runs 95 minutes. Shooting took place in California, including Los Angeles, for 21 days. The film opened #84 to a tiny 2k $ in 3 theaters in North America, where it was pulled after just one week's release. This was the film's smallest out of 6 markets. The 3 biggest were South Korea with 41k $ (49.4 % of the total gross), Turkey with 17k $ (20.5 %) and Italy with 12k $ (14.5 %). The film's budget is unknown, but if it was made for a modest 1-2 mil. $, it would rank as a box office disaster, since it almost made no money at all theatrically. Cappello only returned as a director 8 years hence in 2015 with 2 video shorts. He has directed an episode of Malibu Gothic (presently unreleased) and upcoming hitman-focused feature Steele Wool. Slater returned in Slipstream (2007); Macy in The Deal (2008) and Cuthbert in My Sassy Girl (2008). He Was a Quiet Man is fresh at 79 % with a 6.2/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of He Was a Quiet Man?
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