Film noir casts a long (dark) shadow over cinema. Since French critics retroactively applied the term to crime films of the 1940s, filmmakers across the world and through the decades have attempted to emulate and update the look and feel of what was never designed as a coherent genre. From Chinatown to L.A. Confidential to Gangster Squad, hard drinking detectives, sultry femme fatales, shady locations and shadier characters are fertile ground for filmmakers. Adding his name to that tradition, writer-director Michael Zaiko Hall crafts a curious tale with Peter Five Eight, a film described by the IMDb as comedy, drama, thriller. Spoiler alert: it is neither funny, dramatic or thrilling.
The premise of Peter Five Eight has significant potential. We open on mountains in a rather quaint town, where real estate agent Sam (Jet Jandreau) makes a strong case on a house for new buyers, before encountering a cantankerous neighbour of said house. Upon her return home, we learn that Sam has a deadbeat husband Travis (Michael Emery) who drinks all day and does no work, and that a mysterious man is looking for her. This man, Peter (Kevin Spacey), taunts the locals while extracting information about Sam, and reports to a distant employer, Lock (Jake Weber). Sam clearly has a troubled past, and Peter is that past catching up with her.
So far, so familiar tropes, and the opening titles also echo the film noir conceit through a Brush Script style font and aerial shots of the mountains and town. Such tropes can be used effectively, either played straight or as a comedic pastiche. However, elements quickly appear to demonstrate the squandering of this potential. The cantankerous neighbour raises concerns that might provide an interesting commentary, which then go nowhere, and a final scene suggests wider aspects to the world of the film that make no sense. Peter’s infiltration of the town is drawn out and indulgent, as characters provide ample information that is largely superfluous, not least because it is quickly established that Peter has all he needs. There are references to bit coin and crypto currency which sound like they were included because Hall saw them mentioned in a tweet. Speaking of money, despite the alleged financial troubles of Sam and Travis, their home is beautifully appointed which undercuts any drama. The style also undercuts the drama, as a fight between the two is presented largely in mid-shot before moving to awkward close-ups, while hard edits break the flow of images.
Even the title proves pointless once it receives an explanation, as you may well ask, ‘Oh, is that it?’ A comment that would also be apt as the credits roll.
The performances are quite ugly. Jet Jandreau ostensibly plays a woman with a drinking problem, which she indicates through tottering steps, because that is how drunk people behave, apparently. Worse, the drinking is emphasised in overblown montages as Sam slugs shots against a black background. She blacks out when drinking, in case the people in the back missed that. As Travis, Michael Emery is a bland stereotype, although this is more a fault of the script than the actor as his most dramatic moment is when he stands up, before promptly sitting down again. For some reason he also struggles with reading. A figure from earlier in Sam’s past, Grant (Garrett Smith), does an excellent impression of an impassive and unengaged figure. Nice!
And then we have Kevin Spacey. This film could be seen as part of Spacey’s comeback after accusations and prosecutions (that he was acquitted of). If there were hopes from the faithful (or Spacey’s team) that this might restart his career, there is likely to be disappointment, as Spacey overplays his role horribly. While his hammy dancing, self-mocking and sly winking might be in keeping with the uneven tone of the film, it comes across as showboating and distracting. Viewers unwilling to forgive the allegations against him might take solace if this two-time Oscar winner spends the remainder of his career languishing in tosh like this – that would be laughable if it were not so inept.
The ineptitude includes amateurish mistakes such as continuity errors where a bottle shifts between hands from shot to shot, garish digital blood that is in focus while the surface it spatters on is not, the aforementioned hard edits, a rowing boat chase across a lake that seems to have been included for the sake of the scenery, and a terrible digital explosion that appears for barely two seconds yet is all the more
egregious for being narratively redundant. Speaking of redundant, in one of many tedious longueurs, a character is referred to as ‘inconsequential’. This is an apt description for the character within the narrative, and seemingly Hall realised this and quickly included them in a later scene to justify the character’s entire existence. Had this decision not been made, we might have reached the end of this drivel earlier.
It is genuinely hard to understand the motivation for Peter Five Eight, and equally hard to find the appeal of it. As a thriller about the past catching up with you, it is laboured, overly explained and protracted in a thoroughly tension-draining way. As an interpersonal drama of loves past and present, a lack of character
development leaves the viewer with nothing to care about. Nor does it lean into the conceit of being a pastiche of film noir as everything takes place in bright sunshine with a lack of atmosphere. Even the title proves pointless once it receives an explanation, as you may well ask, ‘Oh, is that it?’ A comment that would also be apt as the credits roll. One should probably then put on Out of the Past or The Killers for a far better experience.
Peter Five Eight is available to rent on Digital Platforms (USA)
