Rent Breakfast on Pluto (2005)

Speak up! - Breakfast on Pluto review by ML

Cillian Murphy will have a stab at just about anything, and whilst it was unquestionably de riguer for a "serious" actor to have a transsexual role on his ledger during the last two decades, and that this has become a little tiresome, I was interested to see what he would bring. The answer is, not a great deal. By 2005 the weeks spent in the company of "a drag queen and her friends" was not something unusual and seemed to have informed Cillian's performance in such a way as to demand he speaks in such a tiny voice that it is often difficult to hear him. He does get to the heart of the character he portrays, but the structure of the film - based firmly upon the source novel - is such that he never really gets to work up a layered version of his character, and it becomes something more akin to an actors study than a deeply involved portrayal.

"Kitten" Braden, Irish and less sexually confused than sexual confusing, waltzes his way through school without the imagined assorted issues as she enjoys a character simply too big to be impacted by the rural maulings of (fictional) border town "Tyrellin". In fact it's not until she brushes up against the IRA that real problems begin to beset her as she happily trades in her home and boyfriend in order to do the right thing - whatever the cost.

An inexplicably present and woefully underused Liam Neeson flits in and out of the narrative providing a decent grounding for the story when he appears in this otherwise flighty, rather groundless, anaemic movie buoyed but not rescued by Murphy and Neeson.

El Bandidos rule - Breakfast on Pluto review by NC

Cillian has a focused thing going on with the camera. Think he was married when this film went out, which is a shade disturbing. Have to say the Irish input is very strong, and there is a certain hypnotic quality all the way through. Still would prefer Terence in Priscilla, Queen of the desert though. Makes me a bit less uncomfortable i guess