Peter Five Eight

Unquestioningly a noir, Spacey’s return mystery treads predictably, not with great reward but with interplay between remorse and revenge.

by Michael Augsberger

For those who felt deeply that Kendall Roy got away scot-free in Succession, there is Peter Five Eight. 

Here Kevin Spacey returns in his third outing since the massive scandals that you no doubt know all about already. Many will avoid Peter Five Eight simply because of his past sins, alleged sins, acknowledged sins, much as my mother avoids actors who have at any point left their wives. (It shoehorns her, surely.) Many others will do so because its mystery treads predictably without great reward, unless you’re in the first category and are out for some bloodsport.

In that sense Peter Five Eight is unquestioningly a style film, a modern noir. There are Ozark-inspired views of lakes and the country town. Quick flashbacks offer us glimpses of the past. But it becomes clear the style was more important than the story.

The movie has three redeeming qualities. The first, of course, is Spacey. Without his performance what little there is to chew on would be totally raw. He gives folksy personality and at the same time embodies condescension and revenge in his man-in-black Peter. He leans into his House of Cards persona, his charisma playing on the “accountability” he seeks.

The title character arrives in a small town where lives an alcoholic couple, one of whom has a history that he’s taken a sinister interest in. Part private eye, part hitman, Peter doggedly and slowly—I emphasize slowly—tracks down and attempts to extract the backstory from Sam (Jet Jandreau).

Along the way he meets (Rebecca De Mornay), whom he seduces mostly in order to gain intel about his target, since she works with her. “She’s too young for you,” De Mornay protests when he first asks, in what is the most believable line of the runtime, when she initially dismisses his interest in Sam as sexual.

Second, Spacey and De Mornay’s

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romantic repartee can be witty at times and one of the film’s surprises. If hit or miss, it’s unpredictable, a mix between pithy one-liners you’d find in Ocean’s and the Shakespeare scene in Vice.

And yet Peter makes the blunder of the century, worse than Van de Velde in Carnoustie’s creek, when he was just about to accomplish his task. Why would someone supposedly so schooled in deception do that? The only explanation is that it leads necessarily to resolving the climactic scene in the most predictable way possible. Noir would just be black without the femme fatale.

Honestly I wanted more of Peter’s client (Jake Weber), who explains half the title’s name by increasing Peter’s fee to $58 million. (It’s also the epigram from Peter 5:8 in the opening title.) He might have been Satan or a crime boss. Later we learn his motives but not quite his relationship to Sam or her sins. If Peter knows Sam’s past already, why does he labor so, researching and trying to draw it out of her? For us, for the noir? Perhaps.

Likely it’s because his client wants to know whether the guilt is wracking her, or if she’s living remorse-free. There is depth in a revenge motive that contains not only punishment but also concern for the perpetrator’s mindset. It also explains why Peter—who may have supernatural longevity—doesn’t just crack the code with a brute force attack, as he demonstrates he has the ability to do.

But the best aspect of Peter Five Eight is its music. That is no damning accusation to hurl in a review. You might say the same of Star Wars, or The Little Mermaid. Not the awkward singalong seduction Spacey produces in the watering hole to attract De Mornay, but the soundtrack that firmly establishes its modern noir and Code era vibe. 

You won’t walk out humming its tunes. It’s not memorable or melodic. It’s purely establishing tone. Again, the film was always about hitting the notes of noir without introducing much jazz anyway. It strikes them without feeling.

One last note: Cursing cool is cool. Cursing for nothing is lame. I don’t know which I hated more: Julia Roberts’s over-the-top F-bombs in her recent dystopia, or the many out of place here. How many did Jack drop in Chinatown?

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