The psychotically murderous actions of this film's protagonist contrast sharply with his sunny, pleasant, and even thoughtful demeanor as well as the narrative's laconic, gentle pace, resulting in a deeply disturbing final product that, appropriately given its schismatic style, is simultaneously provocative and demented. Debut director Hampton Fancher clearly intends his edgy, bizarre story to be unsettling and out-of-sync with his lethargic vibe, so his shocking, singular achievement must be recognized. Owen Wilson and the entire cast are also to be commended for some of their finest work in layered, well-constructed roles, but the main character turns out to be, in the final analysis, unconvincing, and therein lies the picture's fatal flaw. Although they are sometimes charming and unassuming, serial killers don't typically turn out to be quite as slick as Vann Siegert; they are almost uniformly either socially maladjusted or secretly enraged, where Vann is both charming and cool-headed. He just feels too wrong, contrived, and artificial; it wouldn't have been surprising if, in the third act, he had turned out to be an alien. There could be a point in there somewhere (life's more gray than black and white; there's a little bit of killer in each of us; a yin for every yang?), but it's too remote and opaque to decipher. On a purely visceral level, The Minus Man (1999) can be appreciated as a hip, bold, and high-functioning experiment in tone and story at cross purposes, but it ultimately means a whole lot less than it should and disappointingly, has nothing important to say.