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PIXIE
Director: Barnaby Thompson Cast: Olivia Cooke, Ben Hardy, Daryl McCormack, Colm Meaney, Turlough Convery, Chris Walley, Alec Baldwin, Ned Dennehy, Dylan Moran, Rory Fleck Byrne, Fra Fee, Sebastian De Souza MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:33 Release Date: 3/5/21 (limited; digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 4, 2021 Father-and-son filmmakers Barnaby and Preston Thompson give us a comedic crime thriller that's overloaded with a lot of eccentric characters and plot twists. Pixie, directed by the father and written by the son, wants so much to be tough and unique and funny that it comes across more like an exercise in superficial style and attitude than anything else. To explain the plot would take far too long. Indeed, the entire movie turns out to be about its plot, filled with robberies, drug deals, betrayals, some murder and manslaughter, a secret killer, rival gangs, a professional assassin, and a body locked up in the trunk of a car. as its occupants take a road trip across Northern Ireland. The trip-takers are Pixie (Olivia Cooke), the step-daughter of mob leader Dermot O'Brien (Colm Meaney), and two friends named Frank (Ben Hardy), who is infatuated with Pixie, and Harland (Daryl McCormack). Even trying to explain how they end up in the car, with the body in the trunk and bag filled with drugs, would reveal how convoluted the screenplay here is. A couple of guys—both of whom think they're dating Pixie—rob heroin from some real and fake priests. One guy is shot by the other in a jealous rage, and the other is run down by Harland outside Pixie's house. Thinking they can sell the drugs to escape their miserable lives and the forthcoming gang war, Pixie, Frank, and Harland make their way to a successful supplier. The movie barely has time to breathe as all of the complications mount and the fallout of the robberies unfolds. Even when it seems to be giving us some quiet moments about Pixie's grief over the death of her mother, the story is really just establishing another twist, which will eventually lead to a big, climactic shootout in a church between Dermot's gang and the gang, filled with priests and nuns, run by his former partner/current rival Father McGrath (Alec Baldwin). The Thompsons are so busy with all of the twists and turns, the jokes, the violence, and laying the attitude on thick that they've neglected to give us a reason to care about anything happening here (Cooke tries to give her character a pained soul, but Pixie never emerges as a focal point with everything happening). Pixie, then, just feels cynical, bordering on nihilistic. Copyright © 2021 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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