“It’s nothing like the comic book you want it to be.”
That’s a line that Calvin Barr (Sam Elliott) tells an American and Canadian agent (Ron Livingston and Rizwan Manji, respectively) in the middle of a tense and powerful monologue about 40-some minutes into the film, and it’s a perfect way to sum up the kind of experience you’ll be getting in The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot. It’s the first feature from writer/director, Robert D. Krzykowski, and I was incredibly impressed by the weird and distinctive tonal tightrope walk he was pulling off here.
Watching this oddity reminded me of one of my favorite films, Don Coscarelli’s 2002 cult hit, Bubba Ho-Tep. In that film, two men in a retirement home claiming to be Elvis Presley and former President John F. Kennedy (Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis, respectively) find themselves facing off against a rampaging Mummy. It’s exactly as silly as it sounds, but it manages to inject genuine pathos for the characters, exploring themes of aging and mortality to a surprisingly moving effect.
The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot takes the lessons of that film, and ends up going into an even more tonal extreme. The plot of the film, which if you can’t tell by the title, is about an old loner named Calvin, who is living a quiet life in his home town, when one night, he is visited by the two agents mentioned earlier, and ends up reluctantly agreeing to take on the Bigfoot.
The extreme – or gimmick, some would argue – that Krzykowski takes with a premise like that is he plays everything 100% straight. There’s no jokes, there’s no winks to the audience, the tongue is as far from the cheek as it could possibly be. The film plays out like a serious prestige drama, and less like the post-modern, genre bender you’d typically see in films with this kind of ambition. Instead of crazy camera work, the technique is very formal, instead of a pulsating synth music, there’s a sweeping orchestral score, everything about the approach feels like it shouldn’t be done that way, and yet, it works! It really, really works.
For a film like this to work, with this particular angle, it needs commitment and conviction to its conceit, and the filmmakers have that in spades. It’s made with confidence, and despite working with, what had to have been, a low budget, they milk every penny out of it. The film is surprisingly gorgeous, and it flashes back throughout the film to Calvin in his the days just before going into the war and during his mission to kill Hitler, where he is played by Aidan Turner. The period details are plentiful, and there are hardly any obvious signs of budgetary limitations, which I would normally expect for a smaller film.
Also during these flashbacks, we get to see Calvin going on dates and talking to his sweetheart, Maxine (Caitlin FitzGerald). These moments are actually very sweet, and they’re executed in a way that captures the feeling of an old school melodrama, complete with the long-winded romantic dialogue. It’s all done in earnest, and that earnestness allowed me to connect to the characters in a way that probably would’ve been harder to pull off had they leaned on comedy.
Sam Elliot is spectacular, which shouldn’t be that surprising, but it is worth noting that he gives everything to the material. The monologue I mentioned in the beginning of this review feels like the kind of thing you’d use in the Oscar reel. It’s great seeing him go all in on what the filmmakers wanted to do, and it’s astonishing to see how basically the entire cast is totally game as well.
The film is ultimately a meditation on death, loneliness, and regret. It’s about how a man, who under any other circumstance would be considered a hero, a total badass, is actually a sad shell of what he once was. He lives alone with his adorable golden retriever, wallowing in memories, of things that could’ve been, of things that maybe could’ve gone differently, of the meaning – or lack thereof – of all the violence he took part in during the war. He occasionally visits his younger brother, Ed (Larry Miller), who is a local barber, but he generally keeps to himself. He’s a compelling character, just meaty enough on paper, and enhanced by Elliott’s incredible screen presence.
If there is anything close to a misstep in the film, it’s – oddly enough – probably the one moment where it does indulge into a comedic moment. It’s a Bigfoot attack that happens in the third act, and it’s the one part of the film that actually goes a bit over-the-top, even including a vomiting bit. Because the film played everything so straight prior to this, it feels way off. It is, admittedly, an enjoyable moment, but it just didn’t really belong. Plus, the Bigfoot suit is the one part of the film that could’ve used a couple extra bucks for a better look.
Aside from that one nitpick, The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot is a really great film. It takes all your assumptions about what it’s going to be, and throws it away like Luke threw that lightsaber in The Last Jedi. It knows you came for goofy fun, and it goes out of its way to deliver the complete opposite. But on top of that meta-contextual playfulness, it does end up delivering on being a rock solid, melancholic character piece, complete with good production values, strong sense of craft, as well as some thoughtful, engaging, and really moving performances, especially from Sam Elliott. I was thoroughly invested from beginning to end, and if there’s more of this kind of gonzo stuff in Krzykowski’s head, I can’t wait to see what he does next.