Verdict
Summary
A real humdinger of unintentional hilarity, Peter Five Eight will one day be considered a cult classic thanks to wild overacting or non-acting by Jet Jandreau who has to be one of the all-time worst actresses I’ve ever seen in a real movie. That said, Peter Five Eight transfixed me with its incompetence and wild overacting by Jandreau, and I swear to you that people will be watching and sharing this movie for all the wrong reasons pretty soon.
Plot:
A hitman comes to a small town to make his target’s life a living hell before he does his job … because that’s his assignment.
Review:
Sam (played by Jet Jandreau, one of this film’s producers) is a raging alcoholic living in a small lakeside town in the mountains somewhere, working at a real estate office, but she’s not very good at her job. One of her coworkers constantly complains about the fact that he can tell that she’s always drunk, and Sam’s relationship with her good-for-nothing husband (also a beer-drinking lout who hangs out on the couch all day in a funk) teeters on abuse on her part when she throws empty bottles at him, smashing glass and his face in her constant drunken rages. From out of the blue, a suave man in black (played by Kevin Spacey) rolls up into town, handing out $50 bills at gas stations and liquor stores, asking about Sam and if anyone knows where she lives or works. When he finds her, he makes no bones about the fact that he’s been looking for her, and he makes a big scene in a bar one night while she’s drinking with her husband, and with his dancing and singing along with a big band crooner song, acting flamboyant and confident, he manages to impresses everyone in the bar, particularly Sam’s boss, a lonely heart looker (played by Rebecca De Mornay) who takes the guy home, no questions asked. He says his name is Peter, and he literally charms the pants off this woman, while also asking not-so-subtle questions about her coworker Sam. Peter, we learn, is a hitman taking orders from another guy (played by Jake Weber who does most of his scenes behind a laptop screen) who has a good reason to be hunting Sam down: Several years ago, Sam – who’s name isn’t really Sam – killed his daughter in a drunken hit and run, and now he’s hired Peter to systematically destroy her life … and then kill her after getting an honest confession out of her. But while Peter is pretty great at his job, he’s in for a shock when the country bumpkins around town turn out to be just a little more formidable than he expects.
A real humdinger of unintentional hilarity, Peter Five Eight will one day be considered a cult classic thanks to wild overacting or non-acting by Jet Jandreau who has to be one of the all-time worst actresses I’ve ever seen in a real movie. She behaves like an untrained child who’s never been given constructive criticism in her life, and when she’s acting opposite Spacey, a class act even in this inferior effort, she reveals herself to be an amateur in a class all to herself. Spacey, whom we all know, has had his career dismantled by unproven accusations against his character, and he stoops pretty low by starring in this weirdly scripted and directed movie, but he manages to do a really great job with his role. Every time he’s on screen he graces the production with complete panache and professionalism, and he’s the main reason to see it, but wow! The movie is woefully scripted, acted, and constructed and frankly doesn’t deserve him. De Mornay, too, is superlative in the movie, but someone please tell Jet Jandreau to take some acting lessons! She has no business whatsoever starring in anything, much less with a class “A” actor like Spacey. That said, Peter Five Eight transfixed me with its incompetence and wild overacting by Jandreau, and I swear to you that people will be watching and sharing this movie for all the wrong reasons pretty soon. Shot in 2021, but not released until 2024. Directed and written by Michael Zaiko Hall.
Invincible has just released a DVD of Peter Five Eight, but it has no notable special features.
