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DISTURBING THE PEACE (2020)
Director: York Alec Shackleton Cast: Guy Pearce, Devon Sawa, Kelly Greyson, Michael Sirow, Barbie Blank, Jacob Grodnik, John Lewis, Michael Bellisario, Dwayne Cameron, Elle E. Wallace, Jay Willick, Veralyn Venezio MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:31 Release Date: 1/17/20 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 16, 2020 Director York Alec Shackleton knows exactly what he's trying to do with Disturbing the Peace. He just can't do it. The reasons are myriad, but they all boil down to one common factor: They're all a bunch of nonsense. Shackleton and screenwriter Chuck Hustmyre fill their tale of a small town under siege by violent criminals with so many narrative, logistical, and logical inconsistencies that the final result almost beggars belief. It doesn't help that Hustmyre seems to have assembled the whole thing from clichés. Let's start with the hero: Jim (Guy Pearce), a former Texas Ranger whose partner was killed (Our protagonist accidentally shoots him—in a prologue so poorly staged that it almost looks intentional). Since then, he has become a U.S. Marshal in a small town and hasn't held a gun. All of that eventually—like, after an inordinate amount of time under the circumstances—changes when a motorcycle gang run by Diablo (Devon Sawa) arrives. Their plan is to hold the entire town hostage, as they wait to rob an armored truck (which the driver never thinks to drive away when the robbery goes down). Jim and his deputy Matt (Michael Sirow), apparently the only law enforcement in town, have to stop them. This is an old plot, and the filmmakers appear to coast on the notion that such a story is easy to tell. The movie ultimately serves as proof that such is not the case. The game of cat-and-mouse between the cops and the gang members basically has the former running around, without any particular strategy on display. We're never certain where anyone or anything is. Buildings seem to change location, depending on the necessities of each standoff, and Jim gets a laughable amount of mileage out of distracting the villains with pickup trucks. We do know that our hero goes far out of his way to retrieve his old pistol. There are plenty of guns around, such as the shotguns he later grabs from the Marshal's office, but those weapons apparently don't possess symbolic importance. Another character pulls a similar move in the third act (despite the fact that we just saw her holding a gun), which should give one an idea of how little momentum this movie has. Disturbing the Peace clearly was made on the cheap and fly. It shows. Oh, does it show. Copyright © 2020 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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