Caine plays Graham Marshall, a British-American living in New York and working at a large corporate conglomerate. Caine also narrates the film, although his narration is in the third person. This helps to create a sense of disassociation from his character, which is appropriate, as Graham is very much disassociated from life. His wife Leslie (Swoosie Kurtz) seems to respect his position more than she respects him, and that position is quickly shown to be going nowhere. 

 

He’s passed up for a promotion he’s been bucking for when his friend and superior George (John McMartin) retires, and it’s given to a younger man. Graham feels overlooked. He works hard at his job, and nobody notices. He does right by his underlings, and nobody notices. He seethes with frustration at the injustice, and nobody notices. He gets in an altercation with a bum and inadvertently shoves him in front of an oncoming train… and nobody notices.

 

It soon becomes apparent that Graham has experienced a psychotic break. He finds the act of getting away with murder to not be a weight on his conscience, but an alleviation of a weight he had felt for years, from being powerless over his own life. He fantasizes about using “magic” to deal with all of his problems. He sets about fixing his life without the chains of morality holding him back.

 

Part of the reason this works as a dark comedy is that the people who surround him are mostly unsympathetic characters. There’s his personnel officer Stella (Elizabeth McGovern), but she’s the only one in the office or in his home life who seems to have any respect for Graham.

 

His wife is a bit abrasive, always nice but with a passive-aggressive undertone when it comes to money and power. When he leaves for a business trip the day after letting her know he didn’t get the promotion, she says she “forgives [him] for failing”. 

 

 

His new boss, Bob Benham (Peter Riegert) is a corporate slimeball, the kind of guy who happily tried to kiss ass to Graham when it looked like Graham would get the job and then does his best to render Graham obsolete in his current position as soon as he outranks him. The actors in the supporting roles all fit into odious little niches that serve to highlight how dehumanizing Graham’s life has been up until this point.