Guy Pearce Re-Watch: Disappointments

 

Yes, Disappointments from the Guy Pearce Career Re-Watch! 😐

Those who follow my Twitter account @ThereforeReview know that I have spent these pandemic years perusing through a Guy Pearce Career Re-Watch. I retreated to this happy place because Pearce can always be depended upon to turn in a great performance in often exceptional films. 

These less than stellar pictures are not terrible per say. However, their low budget or behind the scenes troubles are obvious – as is the lack of utilizing Guy Pearce to full advantage – resulting in a what could have been sour lingering on the audience palate ranked here from least to most disappointing.

Please click through to previously written reviews and videos at I Think, Therefore I Review, InSession Film or with the Women InSession Podcast, and Keith Loves Movies for more in depth analysis along with these quick commentaries and countdowns.

8. The Infernal Machine – This 2022 throwback thriller is largely a very impressive one man vehicle for the grizzled Pearce as a reclusive, drunken author haunted by Alex Pettyfer's (Sunrise) Helter Skelter shooting response to his lone best-selling novel. The dusty desert, beat up trucks, empty bottles, and gun toting paranoia escalate amid incessant fan mail and dog attacks. Pearce's rambling, increasingly intense, isolated phone booth scenes are excellent. However, the narrative mistakenly strays from his taut desperation in a disappointing, Rube Goldberg final act that's backed into a corner yet thinks it's more clever than it is. 

7. Till Human Voices Wake Us – It's not this lovely 2002 film's fault but the re-cut American version drastically changes the picture with a confusing supernatural element and concurrent flashbacks hurting the poetic introspection. Helena Bonham Carter (The King's Speech) is the enigmatic, barefoot Ruby with seaweed in her hair to Guy Pearce's cerebral, repressed psychologist; and somber transitions recount youthful bike rides, rural quaint, and a fateful drowning before hypnosis and eerie word association. Unfortunately, intercutting the past and present negates the fine performances, titular T.S. Eliot tenderness, and lingering regrets – frustrating the audience with uneven metaphors that lose this beautiful tragedy about letting go. 

6. Winged Creatures – Despite compelling grief, complex characterizations, and senseless gun violence; the fragmented structure of this 2008 drama mirrors its alternative title Fragments by apparently cutting most of its religious metaphors and Winged Creatures novel references. The disjointedness even makes Doctor Guy Pearce's and waitress Kate Beckinsale's (Underworld) Munchhausen motivations confusing and unclear as wives and children are placed in peril. Though the helpless families and distorted survivor flashbacks are realistic; the choppy, unfocused narrative is a disservice to the ensemble grappling with a still timely and delicate issue. 

5. Death Defying Acts – I want to like this 2007 Harry Houdini what if with Pearce's magician romancing psychic con artist Catherine Zeta-Jones (Chicago). It has period style and director Gillian Armstrong's (Little Women) warmth and charm. Unfortunately, the narration by child Saoirse Ronan (Byzantium) over said intimate events is entirely the wrong point of view. It's so intrusive you almost want to watch this on mute. 

4. Iron Man 3 – Despite Pearce's villainous transformation arc, a fine start addressing Tony Stark's superhero PTSD, and superb monkeys in a barrel aviation action; behind the scenes changes to this 2013 Marvel sequel are apparent. The sagging middle descends into a nondescript CGI battle with anonymous Extremis henchfolk battling assorted Iron Man suits on a oil tanker. Shrug.

3. Factory Girl – This 2006 biopic about Sienna Miller's (High Rise) model Edie Sedgwick to the unrecognizable Guy Pearce as Andy Warhol likewise comes off as having the wrong focus – highlighting those who exploited Sedgwick whilst also bending the narrative with attempted edgy editing, haphazard camerawork, and behind the scenes Weinpig interference.

2. Bloodshot – I loved these Valiant Comics but this 2020 Universal Soldier knockoff is just another franchise nonstarter with more nonsensical revenge, elongated messy action sequences, and weak CGI than character development. Vin Diesel (Pitch Black) and mad scientist Pearce feel like they're in two different movies even in the same scene.

1. The Catcher was a Spy – Paul Rudd's (Ant-Man) polyglot bisexual baseball playing library loving spy should be ripe for the epic World War II true story. However, this 2018 yarn instead drops the ball by wasting the entire ensemble – from Pearce's Manhattan Project engineer and physicist Paul Giamatti (John Adams) to Mark Strong (Temple) as Werner Heisenberg, obligatory love interest Sienna Miller, and OSS leader Jeff Daniels (The Newsroom). A handful of deleted scenes don't make up for the rushed, meandering focus, but Rudd runs fast and Pearce looks great in a period uniform. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

🤣