Dir. Frank A. Cappello, US, 2007, 95 mins
Cast: Christian Slater, Elisha Cuthbert, William H. Macy
Review by Carol Allen
This is a compelling and stylishly shot movie about Bob Maconel (Slater), an insignificant little man with a dull office job, who carries a gun into work every day, nursing violent fantasies of massacring his fellow workers, who bully and belittle him and generally make his life a misery. One day, however, another office drone does it for real, going berserk with a gun and when Bob shoots him dead, he accidentally becomes a hero.
Slater plays Bob as a creepy, grey little loser, whose venomously bitter voice over the opening sequence details his resentment against women and sense of loss for a masculinity that never really existed for him. He also transforms himself physically with thinning sandy hair, spectacles and an unattractive stompy walk, which expresses his anger against the world. Elisha Cuthbert is Vanessa, whose life is saved by Bob's action but who is left paraplegic as a result of her injuries. At first resenting Bob for being the one who has effectively confined her to a wheelchair, she then recruits him to help her commit suicide. This woman is no suffering saint; she is feisty, ambitious and a bit of a bitch, whom circumstances have imprisoned in a paraplegic body, and the relationship which develops between her and Bob, who takes on the role of her carer, is an unpredictable one – is she going to dump him or is the relationship going to redeem them both? The outcome, when it arrives, is something totally different and unexpected. Macy makes his mark in a somewhat slight role as their apparently Mr Nice Guy boss.
Good though Slater is in the role, Bob is often a difficult character to empathise with, although he gains our sympathy through his relationship with Vanessa, a role in which Cuthbert excels, bringing us face to face with the dilemma of an attractive and sought after woman, who has been transformed into an object of pity by her disability. The film is an uncomfortable experience, challenging as it does our expectations and confronting some of our prejudices, as in other people's disgusted embarrassment at Vanessa's predicament, when she has a humiliating experience in public. What could have been a totally grim movie is, however, lightened by being generously laced with a bracingly dark, sometimes Kafkaesque humour and some imaginative touches, such as Bob's pet goldfish, which he imagines talks to him, nagging him up for being such a wimp.
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