Peter Five Eight

Apparently this isn't the director's first movie. Which is bad because that's the only thing that would excuse this amateurish nonsense. Actors are bad, editing is *really* bad, camera is bad, dialogue is bad, and I am not sure I can watch enough of this to see if the story is equally as bad. I laughed more in the first seven minutes of this than in some comedies, it is so ridiculous. And this isn't even taking into account that Kevin Spacey is in this dreck. I almost felt sorry for him (but not really, obviously). I hope the director goes to film school or something next. I have seen movies with far smaller budgets that were first time projects that had so much more talent and ideas and knowledge. This is just laughably bad.

Sam (Jet Jandreau) is a professional realty agent working under Brenda (Rebecca De Mornay). Her home life is a drunken mess with a drunken loser husband. Out of blue, Peter (Kevin Spacey) starts investigating and interfering in her life. She has a dark secret past with Lock (Jake Weber).

This is strictly a B-movie with pretentions of being a noir story. The dialogue has some clunky lines. The concept is fine but nothing too special. The filmmaking is not that good. This does have three veteran actors, but the rest are poor. I don't know anything about Jet. She's not good. Some of the minor actors are much worst. As for Spacey, he's trying to add some comedic touches and they don't always fit. I can't say that I love seeing him anyways. It all adds up to a weird B-movie viewing experience.

About seven or eight years have passed since the shameful history with Spacey, different "teams" attributing the shame to vastly different things, when he was still close to the peak of his career. To see him relegated to playing in films like this is beyond sad. No one should be given the power to so thoroughly destroy a man's career, life and legacy except in very clear cut cases where it is beyond a doubt that man did something worse than ruining another person.

But enough about Spacey. When the film started I expected it to be a scene from an in-movie production, waited for the director to shout "Cut!" and fire the writer who would write such things and the actress reading them so laughably bad. And yet, no, that's the film. It continues like that.

When Spacey enters the scene, he makes a silly face which is meant to be threatening. I didn't recognize him. He went old and bloated - again, refer to paragraph 1. And then, after coming out of the car with the hat on, he throws the hat into the car! It was his car hat! The dialogue that follows is only funny when heavily inebriated.

In summary, the only part of the film that is worth it is to hear the man read the lines: "With little regard for idle pleasures, I was doomed to play the villain's part. Here I am, a rail town amongst the vulgar and profane. In the depths of Hell". Quite true, Mr. Spacey, quite true.

When films are following a generic formula, they're often neither great nor terrible, just.. generic. This is the exception however; it's not generic, it's baaaad.

The set pieces are poorly executed and it looks like they spent the budget on Kevin's hairpiece (they should look for a refund) and the acting is nothing short of abysmal.

It's a funny duck you have Jake Weber, Kevin Spacey and. Rebecca De Mornay; three actors that it wouldn't be a massive stretch of the imagination to call them veterans, yet they just aren't good here - not good at all.

All I can say is that this is not a fun film; in fact, it's not even a watchable film.

Avoid.

Forget the intriguing, stylish and sophisticated movies we've seen Kevin Spacey in before. This steaming pile of drivel was unforgettable for all the wrong reasons. The acting was appalling - the female actor who played Sam was so over-the-top with her wild eyes and shocked expressions, it was embarrassing. Kevin did try, bless him, and the scene where he expertly mimed a song in the pool hall was the highlight for me. But the rest was just awful. I did my crossword puzzle while the movie played out. Towards the end it picked up a teeny bit, thanks to Rebecca de Mornay, but a few minutes out of a full length movie is far from satisafactory. Life is too short and there are so many other movies to watch, so please, give this a big miss. I think I'm gonna watch Kevin in LA Confidential again, just to appease myself .....