The Minus Man

It was bound to happen -- a movie about a serial killer who bores his victims to death. Well, not entirely -- genial drifter Vann (Owen Wilson) uses Amaretto laced with a rare lethal mushroom to do in the losers he befriends and decides to euthanize. Think Arsenic and Old Lace without the laughs. Sixty-one-year-old first-time director Hampton Fancher re-creates to a fault the banal and sinister point of view of his killer through non sequitur voiceovers and disjointed minutiae; the result is fascinating and soporific, kind of like the Amaretto without the extra kick.

Vann, of course, is no weirder than anyone else in the stagnant backwater he ends up in: his landlord, Doug (Brian Cox), likes to punch himself in the face; Doug's wife, Jane (Mercedes Ruehl), mopes; and Vann's fellow postal worker Ferrin (Janeane Garofalo) is desperate for human contact. Hovering gratuitously over the proceedings are a pair of grouchy, perhaps imaginary police detectives played by Dwight Yoakam and Dennis Haysbert. A big plus is Sheryl Crow as a sad, funny barfly; for the most part, though, and perhaps intentionally, The Minus Man doesn't add up.

-- Peter Keough