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Review of Michael Lander's Peacock starring Cillian Murphy and Ellen Page by Marina Antunes, published on Sunday, April 18, 2010 - 22:07:23 GMT  The trailer for Michael Lander's Peacock suggested a strange, somewhat creepy tale of John Skillpa, a quiet man with a secret, a secret that the trailer gives away. But even with the big reveal thrown out so quickly, the trailer does something else: it suggests a film with mystery, intrigue and perhaps a little something sinister as if the fact that John is also Emma is simply a passing fact of little consequence sadly, the truth about Peacock is much less mysterious.The first twenty minutes of Lander and co-writer Ryan O Roy's script is a thing of beauty. Gorgeously constructed, it features little dialog but manages to convey John/Emma's being in silent movement. We see Emma preparing breakfast, cleaning up and longingly spying on the neighbors before changing into a skittish John, a man so meek he seems afraid of everything. We see him at work, in his spare time and then home to have dinner and heading for bed before we realize that Emma only comes out in the mornings and then, only for a short period of time. At first, it seems as though Emma is really just John in drag but when we see the second day of transformation, it's clear that there's more at play that we're not privy too, at least not yet. Then John's quiet living comes to a crossroad when a train derails and crashes into his yard and it's that out of control train that sends John's world into a tailspin. It's clear from the get go that there's a mystery to John and Lander tries to stretch that mystery as far as he can but in the end, it's simply not enough to keep the story going for 90 minutes and so the film stretches to include other side characters, none of which are particularly interesting or important. The film also draws out John's gradual “death” as Emma becomes the dominant personality but there doesn't seem to be any motivational pull to Emma's actions and it's never clear why she does what she does. It doesn't help that the film continually hints as to why Emma developed in the first place but other than a sentence about John “meeting” Emma on the day his mother died, the film never provides an answer. That's also fine, I tend to like it when directors leave something for the audience to figure out but when you do so, you also have to provide enough information so that the audience can figure the mystery out for themselves and Peacock never does that, choosing instead to ramble on uselessly until it finally cant ramble on anymore. What's worse is that the film is so bland I couldn't help but keep thinking about where Emma had come from and when the film failed to give me even that nugget of information, I was pissed off; I invested 90 minutes of my time to an uninteresting film and didn't even manage to walk away with the satisfaction of understanding what I'd just seen and what the point of it was. It's not all bad. Though Peacock isn't exactly a good thriller, one can't really call it a thriller even though it tries, and tries hard, to provide a small semblance of anticipation and excitement (an attepmt that stops working 15 minutes into the film), it does feature a great performance from Cillian Murphy in the dual role of John and Emma. The two characters are very different and Murphy brings them both to life rather well and even though neither is particularly memorable, his performance is interesting to watch. Ellen Page has the unfortunate job of playing the too-mature-for-her-age character (there's a stretch) who is so cliche it's a little painful to watch and though the film also features the talents of Josh Lucas, Keith Carradine and Bill Pullman, their roles are so minor they're hardly worth the mention (though it's worth noting that Pullman does stand out as the rambling bank manager and easily the creepiest character in the film). Peacock tries hard to rise above the bare bones story concept but the acting and great score (Brian Reitzell's work is hauntingly gorgeous) are simply not enough to do it. When the credits roled, I was so confused that I searched the extras for some clarification only to find an alternate ending that confused me even more. Lander's thriller wannabe is a confusing jumble of badly developed ideas which happen to be acted out by a talented group of actors who are squandered away in a film that is so concerned with creating a mystery that it overlooks the fact that it also needs to be a good movie. A sad waste of a great cast. Rating: 4.5 out of 10 Source: www.quietearth.us |
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© 2006-2010 Dominik Keppner
© 2006-2010 Dominik Keppner
