THE MINUS MAN A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ***
With just the sort of script that Hitchcock would have been drawn to, THE MINUS MAN features everyday people who aren't always quite what they seem. Full of small twists and subplots, the deliciously diabolical drama stars Owen Wilson as Vann Siegert, a likeable all-American boy type, who has just one tiny flaw -- he's a serial killer.
Vann, a deranged young adult, is really a sweet blonde with a strong moral code, just not a normal one. "Never done anything violent to anyone," he explains. His MO is to put fast-acting poison in sweet-tasting liquor, which he keeps in a little flask. When his intended victim notices the booze, he generously offers them a swig -- "to put them to sleep."
The story is told in voice-over from the perspective of the killer, who shares his thoughts on his motivations and techniques. ("I take the natural momentum of a person and draw it toward me." "I never make a plan. Like a comet shooting across the sky. You never know where it'll land.")
Written and directed by Hampton Fancher, the co-writer of BLADE RUNNER, THE MINUS MAN should get bonus points for its trailer. In an age in which studios think that audiences will not see a movie unless the entire plot is revealed in the trailers, THE MINUS MAN dares to have a trailer that features not a single clip from the film. All you see in it are two fictional people leaving the movie, arguing about it.
A meticulous and delicate little mystery and thriller, THE MINUS MAN can be thought of as the anti-SCREAM -- low on gore, as if the killer himself made the movie. He's a gentle soul, who wouldn't want to disturb the audience.
Vann is a loner who drives a pickup along small country roads until he, uncharacteristically, settles in a small town for a while. He takes a room in the house of a middle-aged couple named Jane (Mercedes Ruehl) and Doug (Brian Cox). Supposedly, their daughter, who's off to college now, used to sleep in the bedroom that they are renting. Like most of the story, everything is suspect. Jane, for example, has a sullen look, and her sunken eyes seem to be hiding something. Quirky Doug is a conundrum. One night, he comes in beaten up. Who did it? A stranger in a bar? Jane? Vann? Or maybe, Doug himself? Some of the story's puzzles are immediately solved while others fester.
Vann quickly becomes ingrained into Jane and Doug's Rockwellian town. He even gets himself a girlfriend at the local Post Office where he finds a job sorting mail. In a surprisingly sunny performance, Janeane Garofalo plays his girlfriend without a hint of her signature sarcasm. Showing a naïve and playfully alluring side rarely seen, Garofalo proves that the studios may have incorrectly pigeonholed her.
Hitchcock understood the power of humor, something THE MINUS MAN could have used more often. When he tries, Fancher is able to enliven his movie with carefully chosen comic situations. "I look harder than anybody," Vann says in a wryly-funny scene, as he participates in a large search for a guy that he has killed. "I look so hard, I forget there's nothing to find." He knows the body isn't buried in these woods, but he searches diligently nevertheless.
Bobby Bukowski's intimately lit cinematography, full of close-ups, gives the striking picture a realism and an immediacy. Although the film's deliberately slow pacing will undoubtedly irritate some, the director's style is more mesmerizing than soporific. With Fancher averaging about a script a decade, one would hope that this film will boost his cachet in Hollywood and he will be sought out more often.
THE MINUS MAN runs 1:45. It is rated R for language and a scene of drug use and would be fine for teenagers.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
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