The Man Who Killed Hitler and then The Metaphor

Spoilers: This film is about a man who kills Hitler, and then the Bigfoot. And that's it. This film's plot is literally it's title.

We open on Calvin Barr in a bar and immediately this movie had me. Barr is played by Sam Elliott, classic manly man with one of the manliest moustaches and manly voice to match. You might recognise him as Bradley Cooper's brother in A Star is Born, a film in which Bradley Cooper's performance just feels like an impression of Sam Elliott, but he was also the other Ron, from Parks and Rec, the Stranger in The Big Lebowski (in which we also meet him sitting at a bar) and, perhaps most notably, Reggie Marks, the titular character in Blue Jean Cop, in which Sam Elliott plays a blue jean wearing cop who is partnered with a straight-laced suit wearing cop played by Peter (Robocop) Weller. I know what you're thinking: A cop who wears blue jeans partnered with a cop in a suit? How will they ever get along well enough to crack the case? You'll just have to pop down to your local Blockbusters to find out.

As I was saying. Sam Elliott. At a bar. Great stuff. The whole beginning of this movie lured me in.

There are flashbacks to Calvin Barr as a young man, played by hunky Aidan Turner, undercover in Nazi Germany - he arrives at a security desk whereupon he empties his pockets for an inspector who gives a curious disapproving face at a liqour flask and some of the other seemingly innocent items. Our protagonist later assembles said items into a pistol with the Liquor flask appearing to operate as a silencer. I'm intrigued. The production values are pretty good and although the makeshift gun is a little ridiculous there seems to be some humour here. Surely with a title like that there's got to be some humour. Surely this film's tongue is in its cheek?

Back to old man Barr and he drunkenly fends off three thugs trying to rob him, in a scene that's been done a million times before, but admittedly is almost always pretty satisfying to watch and in this case serves its purpose in letting us know this old man's still got it, albeit in a pretty lazy way. Bill Withers on the soundtrack in this scene though is pretty choice.

Then the old man drives off and pulls over to have a good cry as the Title appears on screen. At this point I'm a little weary. Even before the opening credits the film's tone has gone from story about a drunken old man, to an Indiana Jones style adventure, to a Clint Eastwood style vigilante tale, to emotional story about getting old. I enjoy films that can pull off a mix of tones, but pulling it off is rare: mostly such an erratic tone is a red flag for me. Mostly.

As we meet Barr again the next morning my hopes were raised again. The tone is immediately set at a gentler pace with the fantastic Cast Your Fate To The Wind by the Vince Guaraldi Trio on the soundtrack and the introduction of a lovely dog as Barr goes about his morning and pays a trip to the barbers. This is a vibe I dig. Gentle pace. Light jazz. Old men going about their days slowly. Dogs. There's a whole genre of movies like this; movies like Lucky (2017) The Straight Story (1999) and The Old Man and The Gun (2018). They're great. This is not one of those movies.

There's an odd scene featuring an overly ceremonious shave and then a pretty unceremonious assassination of Hitler. That's that part of the title over. Honestly, I was surprised. I kinda thought the assassination of Hitler might be a bigger deal. There was a whole Tom Cruise movie called Valkyrie about a Hitler assassination attempt and they didn't even succeed. In this one it's just kind of over before you know it.

The rest of the movie trips along in similarly fairly unceremonious fashion. There's a particularly bad expositional scene in which Barr is recruited to hunt down the bigfoot in order to stop a plague that will wipe out all of life on earth and I was only astonished at how the everyone managed to deliver the dialogue with such straight faces. After some hesitation he agrees and then hard cut to Barr shooting Bigfoot. There's no tracking, no anticipation or tension. Literally just. Cut. Bang. Sure, Bigfoot doesn't quite go down immediately and there's maybe 15 minutes of the pair of them fucking around in the jungle for a bit but Bigfoot's costume was pretty shit and he wasn't even that big. By this point I was just staring at the screen dumbfounded. This film is literally about a man killing Hitler and then the Bigfoot.

At one point the Bigfoot is lying, seemingly dead or dying on a rock. Barr lies beside it and holds its hand. The camera pans for a moment so we can only see Barr and as it pans back I'm thinking there is going to be some terrific twist where he is in fact lying in a nursing home bed next to his dying wife as he is suffering senile dementia. That's the only way this movie could make sense. But no. We pan back and it's still a shit Bigfoot costume.

Later after Barr's fake funeral it is suggested that Barr drove away so he wouldn't have to die in this small town and I'm thinking again that there will be some reveal that everything we had seen were just the mythic stories that are nice to tell about people instead of the realities. But no. Barr returns with a broken arm and less an ear just to remove any doubt that what we had witnessed might be some clever metaphor. No metaphors here I'm afraid. Oh, wait. I feel like the stone in his shoe was a metaphor... for something.

Man, this film needed some better fucking metaphors.

There was also a few scenes of a romantic subplot that never really concluded and some bullshit about Barr not opening a box. At least the movie wasn't called The Man who Killed Hitler and then the Bigfoot but wouldn't open a Box.

2 Blue Jean Cops out of 5