The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then Bigfoot, But if Quentin Tarantino Didn’t Write It

How could a film with the title The Man Who Killed Hitler and then Bigfoot go wrong? Perhaps there are gazillion ways to Sunday to stumble after such promise. Still, to take this promise and break it by boring the audience is not only not right, it’s not even wrong. First time feature length director Robert Krzykowski, who also wrote and produced the movie seems to think he can get away with telling a tragic love story (and not very well) without honoring the promise of the title. The much beloved Sam Elliot does his level best to save this sinking ship, but ultimately fails.  The film gets down on its knees and pleads with the audience to feel indifferent.

I really wanted to like this movie but Krsykowski really, really didn’t want that. Stylistically Krzykowski is more interesting in his choice to shoot this as if it was shot in the nineteen seventies. The film has a gritty look to it, and pre-Dolby sound. Through flashbacks we get Aidan Turner (Loving Vincent) as the younger Calvin Barr. He’s behind enemy lines disguised as a German SS soldier who seamlessly moves about until he is facing Hitler. Krzykowski has no interest in developing scenes that illustrate the tense and terrifying nature of such a mission, they are scenes only to fulfill the titles promise and this is how he breaks that promise.

Before the younger Barr assassinates Hitler, we are offered a scene in which the older Barr is carjacked by three cardboard thugs. What should have been a thrilling scene of an older veteran struggling to overcome these thugs is instead a poorly choreographed fight scene in which Barr handily defeats the thugs. It is following this that we are then subjected to the too easy killing of Hitler by the younger Barr before returning to the present (1970’s) to meet two agents.  One from the United States and one from Canada. As if to create a sense of top secret so super secret agents, Krzykowski calls them Flag Pin and Maple Leaf and leaves it at that.

We learn from Flag Pin (Ron Livingston) and Maple Leaf (Rizwan Manji) that Bigfoot is very much real and apparently the source of a super sick plague that threatens humanity.  We also learn that Calvin Barr is immune to this plague. Barr naturally asks how it is they even know he’s immune to it and a bit of throwaway exposition ensues. We also learn Barr who killed Hitler that the German’s used a body double to make it appear as if the Fuhrer was still alive and his act only killed the serpent to have a many headed serpent sprout in its place. Now that would have been an interesting story to see developed, but instead we get the boring love story.