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The Minus Man (1999)
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Movie Review by Zara 
January 24th, 2007
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Like stepping into someone else's underwear
You ever watch a movie and wonder what the people behind were thinking when they decided to green-light it? I've always been of the opinion that when a movie is made it is done for one of two reasons, either to make the studio money or because the director wants to get his voice heard and cause a stir in the way film-making it done. THE MINUS MAN is a movie that follows neither. There's no possible way that a story this slow could have drawn audiences into the theaters in droves and the director seems content to just sit back and follow his stars around with a camera, what I like to refer to as anti-directive directing.
Wilson plays a sociopath wanderer who has only two expressions, and the second one looks a whole hell of a lot like the first. He's been poisoning people with a plant toxin mixed in with amoretto and prides himself on the fact that he's never been aggressive towards anyone. He doesn't even offer the alcohol to his victims, they partake of it through their own free will. When he rents a room in the home of a husband and wife (Brian Cox & Mercedes Ruehl) with as many personality problems as himself, and takes a job as a mail carrier where he starts a romance with another oddball (Janeane Garofalo), he has to question his M.O.
This movie is almost agonizingly boring. The pace meanders and I frequently found myself stretching and asking what the damn point of it was. But Wilson is mesmerizing. You would think that they guy who has made a fortune cultivating a career on non-exclusionary, simple-minded humor wouldn't be able to pull off the serial killer, but he does it with calm ease. Serial killers in real life are rarely as flashy as Kevin Spacey has made us believe over the years, most of the time they're boring S.O.B's who get away with what they do for so long because they fly under the radar. It doesn't make for enthralling cinema, which is why THE MINUS MAN is a rare duck worth taking a look at. Sure, it's slow. But it's unique, and Awesome knows they never green-light anything unique anymore.
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