The Film
Peacock is one of those movies where it's clear that someone (in this case, co-writer/director Michael Lander) was interested in telling a story about a person like John, but unsure of what story to tell. All of the elements that must have appealed to Lander are used over the course of this 91-minute movie, but the plot is a bunch of distracting background noise that prevents Peacock from being the character piece it wants to be. Everyone is decent, including top-billed co-stars Susan Sarandon and Ellen Page, but only Josh Lucas, in a small role as a local cop, generates any believable connection to John.

Part of the problem is that the movie requires what was, for me, an impossible leap of faith. Yeah, yeah, suspension of disbelief and all of that, and I'll be the first to agree that, as the character(s) of John and Emma, Murphy conjures up two distinctive personalities. Even so, and despite the fact that Murphy doesn't look immediately mannish with makeup on, it's not enough for me to buy that, in a small town where everyone appears to be acquainted with John, not one single person realizes that Emma is John underneath. To reduce this even further, some of these characters, like Lucas as the cop, or Ellen Page as struggling single-mother Maggie (sounding oh-so-very Canadian!), are specifically supposed to be close to John on a personal level. Although it might take a minute or two for them to wrap their heads around the idea, every scene with these characters ignores the extreme likelihood that they would outright recognize him, or at the very least, point out that they look mighty similar (brother and sister might've worked better, but the plot necessitates a married couple). Meanwhile, Sarandon's character Fanny is focused on women's rights, and is very concerned about Emma as an independent woman. Again, even if I were to ignore the massive other reasons that John should be found out immediately, you'd think that this woman, who spends her entire life around other women as the proprietor of a women's shelter, would realize that Emma wasn't who she appears to be as they interact.

John's agitation is a similar issue. John and Emma are distinct and completely different personalities, so John has no memory of what Emma does, and vice versa. The train that crashes into John's backyard (in a hail of truly awful computer graphics) has a sign for one of the city's two political candidates, so the opposing candidate, Mayor Ray Crill (Keith Carradine), sends Fanny (his wife) and campaign manager Connor Black (Graham Beckel) over to see if they can throw a town rally around this visual metaphor for his opponent's chances. Emma is slowly convinced, but John's reaction to the Crill's proposition borders on full-body anxiety. When confronted at his office, he gets so upset, it's a wonder he doesn't collapse, and yet, the various people involved keep trying to gently talk him into it.

The script, co-written by Ryan Roy, doesn't have much of a goal, so it wanders around, hastily introducing characters like Maggie and forcing Page to struggle through clumsy exposition while Murphy does his one-man show. It took quite a bit of patience on my part to make it through Peacock, and it's not because the movie is painfully inept, but because it has no focus or dramatic drive whatsoever. Not enough is made of the backstory involving John's abusive mother or whether or not John is completely insane to know what the stakes are when people start putting the pressure on, and so it's just endless unbelievable scenes of people talking to Emma, or John squirming in discomfort as his life starts to fall apart. The third act that follows is a bit of a mess, with the lines between John and Emma becoming inexplicably blurred. I'm pretty sure there's a whole sequence where John as Emma pretends to be John, but it's hard to tell, and it hurts my head to wonder what it means for the character on a psychological level.

In the end, though, Peacock is merely a mess, not an abject failure. If the viewer looks closely, the pieces are there, but the puzzle is too vague. The movie arrives at an ending that makes some level of emotional and thematic sense (at least half of it does), but all of the bits and arcs that would have led the audience to that ending are buried in the movie, without the right finesse or emphasis to let the audience in on it before it's all over.

The DVD
The art for Peacock is not bad in theory (if slighlty lazy), but it also makes the movie look like a Psycho-esque horror movie, which it definitely is not. The art also plays down John's situation, although it is outlined in full in the box copy, should anyone read it, and there's a photo of John in the wig where you can't see his face. The entire thing is stuck in an ECO-BOX case with no insert, and the disc itself has the front cover image printed on it in full color, minus the floating heads.

The Video, and Audio
On any sort of detailed inspection, Lionsgate's 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation is just plain terrible. If you're watching the movie on a small display, the vivid colors go a long way towards fooling the eye into thinking they've been given a shiny, modern new transfer, but on my HDTV, exteriors crawled with mosquito noise, jagged edges appeared on almost every surface (particularly the credits), and huge, disgusting-looking artifacts are visible in the various dark and shadowy bits. Shame on you, Lionsgate. It's almost a surprise the disc is anamorphic.

Dolby Digital 5.1 audio fares better: at least the music has some solid directional cues. The same can't really be said for the movie, which basically just comes through the center channels, but then again, Peacock wasn't ever going to be an audio demo disc in the first place. A 2.0 track is also included, as well as English and Spanish subtitles.

The Extras
Four deleted scenes (3:57) are included, complete with little cards explaining where they go in the movie. They're the true definition of deleted scenes: just little snippets that were deemed unnecessary and ended up hitting the cutting room floor, so they aren't very interesting, but the third one does clear up a bit of confusion in the third act. An alternate ending (2:31) works a little better than the existing ending, which hits the nail on the head in comparison. This version chooses to imply instead of show, which is a better tactic.

"Welcome to Peacock: Behind the Scenes" (21:21) is a basic making-of featurette which shows that the movie's biggest crime might have just been ambition. The way Lander talks about the project illustrates how he wanted to make a grand multi-genre film. Better luck next time, I suppose. Sadly, the clips of actual film footage actually looks a little bit better here (or at least less awful; no compression artifacts) than it does when you watch the actual movie. Finally, "Cillian Murphy Rehearsal Scenes" (3:20) is a really cool but all-too-brief look at the actor and director working on his character, shot with a handheld camera.

Trailers for Brothers, Tenderness, and Tetro play before the main menu, and are accessible under the special features menu as "Also From Lionsgate". No trailer for Peacock has been included.

Conclusion
As far as these things go, Peacock ranks as an interesting failure, and fans of Murphy or Page might find it worthwhile as a rental, but thanks to the mildly abysmal video presentation on this disc, I can only advise people to skip this lackluster effort from Lionsgate.