Lightning McQueen Is A Cold-Blooded Serial Killer In R-Rated 90s Thriller

By Robert Scucci
| Published 1 hour ago

Thanks to my incessant Tubi scrolling, I now know that Owen Wilson can competently and convincingly portray a serial killer. Whenever I think of Wilson, I think Zoolander, Cars, and Shanghai Noon. He’s so great at being silly that I didn’t think he had it in him to go this dark. It’s not that I thought he couldn’t, I just never saw him do it. Admittedly, I’m not the type of guy to say, “Man, Owen Wilson is so great that I have to go through his entire filmography.” This is why we need to consider our blind spots, because 1999’s The Minus Man is a great psychological thriller that I completely overlooked until this week.

Owen Wilson At His Most Sinister

The Minus Man tells the story of a nomadic serial killer named Vann Siegert (Owen Wilson). When we’re introduced to him, we’re made privy to his primary M.O., which involves meeting people in unassuming places and poisoning them with the contents of his flask. It’s a simple enough operation. He meets a girl named Casper (Sheryl Crow) at a bar, learns she has a heroin habit, leaves with her, shares his flask, waits for her to expire, and stages her body to look like she died of an overdose before moving on to his next victim.

Deciding to lay low for a while, Vann skips town and rents a room from Doug (Brian Cox) and Jane (Mercedes Ruehl). Jane has her reservations about treating a tenant like a guest, but Doug, clearly searching for a friend in Vann, encourages him to stick around and tells him the Post Office is hiring seasonal workers ahead of the holidays. Vann gets the job, where he meets a mailroom clerk named Ferrin (Janeane Garofalo). They hit it off in an awkward way, and all signs point to them becoming an item. The problem is that Vann is itching to kill again.

As Vann proves himself a competent employee at the USPS, he begins to lay down roots in town, which directly conflicts with the two rules he lives by, “don’t murder people you know, and don’t do it in the town you live in.” He poisons a local high school football star named Gene (Eric Mabius) and buries the body at the beach, but only before similarly killing a diner patron using the same method. Keeping up appearances with his otherwise friendly demeanor, Vann continues seeing Ferrin, but things at home take a sinister turn. Doug starts unraveling for reasons never fully explained, and his behavior draws too much attention to the household, which worries Vann.

As Vann’s killing spree ramps up, he has a psychological break of his own, involving multiple confrontations with Detectives Blair (Dwight Yoakam) and Graves (Dennis Haysbert). They mock his M.O. and question him until he breaks in these sequences. It’s up to you, however, to decide whether these exchanges are real, imagined, a sign of what’s to come, or simply a manifestation of Vann’s guilt.

No Easy Answers

What’s most enthralling about The Minus Man is how it plays with reality versus imagination. It’s clear that Vann isn’t all there. It’s also clear that he’s a maniac who knows how to put on a pleasant face, allowing him to blend in seamlessly with society. We only catch glimpses of his life before settling down, and the film ends with him leaving town forever, so we never get a full picture, which only adds to the mystery.

Owen Wilson brings something here that I haven’t seen in any of his other films, and his portrayal of Vann is commendable to say the least. His quiet restraint and ability to present himself like a regular guy make for a genuinely unnerving character study, and it’s a testament to his range outside of comedic roles.

If you’re interested in seeing Wilson in one of the most against-type roles of his career, I strongly recommend checking out The Minus Man, currently streaming for free on Tubi.