Review: Disturbing the Peace
DVD & Digital: Disturbing the Peace (2020)
Jim Dillon (Guy Pearce) is a small town Marshal who hasn’t picked up a gun in 10 years after a hostage situation went wrong and ended with him shooting and paralysing his partner when they were both Texas Rangers.
Jim is distraught when hearing that his ex-partner has passed away after 10 years of being immobile, however his day is about to get even worse when a gang of outlaw bikers ride into town with the intent of pulling of a heist that will make them very rich, all while not giving a damn about who they kill while doing so.
Will Jim finally pick up a gun to save his town?
Of course he will! Now while that is of course a spoiler, did you really think that he wouldn’t?
Herein lies the problem with Disturbing the Peace; it is a completely generic action movie whereby you can play a game of “tick off the action movie tropes“.
This necessarily is no bad thing, especially if you love action movies, but its restricted budget, pedestrian direction (which makes even the most explosion filled/gun touting scene look like it is from a post-watershed episode of Eastenders), and amateur hour acting (with the exception of Guy Pearce and Devon Sawa) makes the whole movie fall quite flat in the excitement stakes.
Devon Sawa chews up the scenery as ‘Diablo’; the leader of the bikers and a borderline caricature of a cinematic bad guy, while Guy Pearce puts in an always reliable shift, this time as a tormented and suffering lawman. The rest of the cast are noticeably worse, with a couple of them actually making me laugh when I should have been feeling pity for them.
Having said all of the above, there was something (though I sure as hell don’t know what) that kept my attention throughout. The action was stilted, the narrative had no surprises whatsoever, and the ending could have been guessed 10 minutes into the movie. Maybe it is my innate love of the lower budget/quality side of cinema that kept me watching through to the end?
If you’re a fan of Guy Pearce and/or Devon Sawa then you’ll have to watch if only for completions sake. If you’re a fan of low budget action movies, then grab a few beers and a few mates and you’ll have a laugh. If you’re none of those, then Disturbing the Peace is probably not for you.
Review by Dave from a streaming link kindly supplied by Signature Entertainment.
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