MINUS MAN, THE (director/writer: Hampton Fancher; screenwriter: based on the 1990 novel by Lew McCreary; cinematographer: Bobby Bukowski; editor:Todd Ramsay; cast: Owen Wilson (Vann Siegert), Janeane Garofalo (Ferrin), Brian Cox (Doug), Mercedes Ruehl (Jane), Dwight Yoakam (Blair), Dennis Haysbert (Graves), Sheryl Crow (Casper), Danny 'Big Black' Rey (Arthur), Eric Mabius (Gene), Lew McCreary (Man in Diner), 1999)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
This creepy serial killer tale had all the more fright in it than the more highly touted "Felicia's Journey, "and was a superior telling of a homicidal maniac on the prowl story than the more flamboyant venture "American Psycho" was. The Minus Man stars Vann Siegert (Owen Wilson), as an affable, clean-cut, blond drifter, with a bland personality, and someone who offers no reasons for what he does, except some vague philosophical explanations, as he talks into his miniscule tape recorder revealing his private thoughts: "I look for the meaning of things and act upon it at the spur of the moment. I take the natural momentum of a person and draw it towards me. You don't always choose what you do, sometimes what you do chooses you."
Hampton Fancher, the Blade Runner screenwriter and the first-time director of "The Minus Man," creates a film that sets a dark mood of everyday normal life contrasted by the cheery personality of Vann, who looks like the average "Joe," easily fitting into his surroundings. He drives his blue pickup truck from somewhere in the Pacific Coast, hiding the poisons underneath his truck he discovered there, while spending so much time alone in the woods. He is such a well-mannered and congenial young man, whose appeal is supposed to make us irritated that we can like someone like him. He even tells us in his narration, how good he feels about himself, as he crows to himself that he does his killings with the minimum of violence.
The film opens when Vann enters a nearly empty roadside bar, pays an attractive alcoholic and junkie's (rock star Sheryl Crow) bar tab, gives her a lift, watches her get high on smack, and offers her a poisoned drink of Amaretto from his flask for a quick and painless death. A crime with no sex or any other motive. The emptiness of his action, and the film's emphasis on his charms, while keeping his past mysterious, adds chills to his moody persona.
Vann spends the night asleep in his truck by the beach, but is awakened and questioned by a state trooper about why he is in an off-limits area. But, because he is so polite, he does not arouse the trooper's suspicions and therefore no search of the vehicle takes place. He shows up the next morning in a sleepy West Coast suburban town and rents a room in a cottage from an unhappy middle-aged couple whose daughter they tell him is away in college, but later it becomes evident that she must be missing, or ran away, or is dead (it is never explained which).
Jane (Mercedes Ruehl) is at first suspicious of the renter, but Doug (Brian Cox) takes to him right away and gets him a temp job for Christmas in the local post office. Doug, lonely for companionship -- as the couple is quietly depressed -- takes Vann to the local high school football game, where he meets the star player (Mabius) afterwards in a restaurant. Next week, before a big November game, he gives the football player with the promising future in the F.B.I. but doubts about the present, a lift in his truck and allows him to have a few swigs from his poisoned Amaretto flask. He even joins the search party looking for him when he is reported missing, looking hard for him, even though he knows that he has already buried him somewhere out of their sight.
Vann often has vivid fantasies that he is being vigorously interrogated by a pair of rough detectives (Dwight Yoakam and Dennis Haysbert) who have been tracking him down and suspect him of being the serial killer, but can't come up with the proof (like everything about Vann, it is never made clear whether this a projection, had actually happened or will happen in the future).
While at the the post office, he impresses his supervisor (Rey) that he is diligent, so he is given even more responsibilities, even subbing for a letter carrier who is ill. The routine work seems to agree with him, as he mentions that this is the best job he ever had. At the workplace, his co-worker, Ferrin (Janeane Garofalo), finds him appealing and tries to make herself available to him. This is a different kind of part for the usually gruff Garofalo. Here she plays a sweet, vulnerable girl, who wants a serious relationship, but has trouble getting the shy Vann in an amorous mood, and when she does succeed, he is so awkward in his physical advances to her, that she is scared off by him.
What carries the day for this film about the banality of evil, which presents its story as a mind game Owen Wilson is playing, is the strong performances by him and Brian Cox, as they both are good at conveying men who are psychologically damaged goods. While Janeane Garofalo and Mercedes Ruehl are able supporting characters, completely believable as women who need a man in their life to feel fulfilled. The film gets over, despite its weakness of allowing the serial killer to be someone whom we can never understand or come to terms with.
These weird killings do happen in present society, and when we read about them in the newspapers, we even know less about 'why' than we do here. In the characterization Wilson gave to this psychopath, you could see how his normalcy wasn't normal, and maybe that's about all we know about most serial killers. But, we can't let society off the hook as generously as we do in the newspapers, and what makes this film particularly engaging, at least more engaging than most of the serial killer films I have seen recently, is that in this film the sickness in society also becomes part of understanding why these weird things happen. What is unsaid becomes, at least, pointed out as to where we should start looking for answers, if we can only stop looking at the conventional places where we usually look and start looking at ourselves as a society and what we have created. I just wish this film had more body in it, more of a feeling for what it was up to, something more revealing.
REVIEWED ON 6/1/2000 GRADE: B
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews