Bullet in the Brain (2001)

You may not always glean this from my scatterbrained and reflexive reviews here on TMDB, but I am deeply fascinated with English as a written language. Specifically, I am enthralled by how writers use words in unique and creative ways to convey something intensely personal. Ironically, what I am talking about here — what we call a writers' skillful "turn of phrase" — is *itself* a fun turn of phrase that suggests that brilliant prose is analogous to beautifully-crafted pieces of woodwork, turned on a lathe.

This is simply one of the best short films you will ever watch. But it should be no surprise, really, because the Tobias Wolff short story on which it is based is similarly awesome (and certainly worth reading whether or not you see the film), and Tom Noonan is a fantastic and criminally underrated character actor. Dean Winters (who, oddly, gets top billing whenever this film is mentioned, probably because he was starring in **'Oz'** at the time) is also decent, but a bit of a caracature, even if intentionally so for purposes of the plot.

The shame is that finding this film in 2026 is becoming increasingly difficult. I originally caught **'Bullet in the Brain'** on the CBC Gem website a few years back, but that site has since been shuttered. There are short-lived bootlegs of it that appear on YouTube, but many of them are unnecessarily edited or split into two parts. I don't want to break any TMDB rules by linking to copyrighted media, but this film does pop up on YouTube or Vimeo every once in a while if you want to search for it. Good luck finding it in something better than blurry 480p, though. Even so, it's worth suffering the poor resolution.

Few films can manage to convey the depth and complexity (and contradiction) of a character even when given a two-hour runtime, so it is quite a feat how well this film does it within a scant 14 minutes. The manner in which the many layers of Anders are revealed is quite novel, frankly, but also a stark reminder of the 'multitudes' that exist within every person — even someone as purposefully prickly and disdainful as Anders. Since watching it, this film has effectively claimed a section of my consciousness, which is now quick to remind me that people are never as simple or as petty as I might sometimes like to imagine.