L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, January 5, 2006 6:00 pm
In 1992, Neil Jordan combined transvestism and the “Irish troubles” into “The Crying Game,” a powerful thriller with a stunning surprise ending. With “Breakfast on Pluto,” Jordan returns to the same subject matter, but this time it’s played almost as a farce, albeit a farce with some very dark elements.
Based on the novel by Patrick McCabe, who also wrote “The Butcher Boy,” which Jordan turned into a 1996 film, “Breakfast on Pluto” is a chapter-by-chapter account of the life of Patrick “Kitten” Braden, an effeminate lad who was abandoned by his mother on the doorstep of a priest, then gets mixed up with the IRA when he tries to find mom.
“Kitten” is played by Cillian Murphy, the cold-eyed airborne kidnapper in “Red Eye.” This time Murphy commits his considerable talents to playing the deliberately transgressive if naive Kitten, who flounces around the tiny Irish town without regard to the scorn he receives from nearly everyone, including his stepmother, who eventually gives him the boot.
On the road, he gets picked up by The Mohawks, a rockabilly band given to performing in glam makeup and Indian costumes. Mohawks singer Billy Rock (Gavin Friday) takes a liking to Kitten, much to the chagrin of the rest of the band.
Billy sets Kitten up in an old seaside trailer that had belonged to his mother. But the trailer is also being used as an arms cache by the IRA — which eventually lands Kitten in trouble. Escaping with his life, Kitten heads to England to try to find his mother, who supposedly looks like Mitzi Gaynor.
There he meets lonely magician Bertie. He’s played by Stephen Rea, just one of the Jordan collaborators who return for this odd but entertaining picture. Others include Liam Neeson, who plays Father Bernard, the priest who discovers a baby on his doorstep and later comes to befriend Kitten and the pregnant Charlie (Ruth Negga), and Brendan Gleeson, who is funny in a bit role as a theme park character named Uncle Bulgaria.
“Breakfast on Pluto” has received mixed reviews since opening last fall. From my perspective, that’s largely because the picture doesn’t quite fit into any safe pigeonhole. It’s funny, almost satiric, but then it is interrupted by the very real terror of IRA bombings and guns randomly pointed at heads.
Those scenes shock the viewer back to a more gritty reality before Murphy coyly takes Kitten off on another adventure and things lighten up again. I found that juxtaposition to be effective rather than offsetting and, unlike some who have said the film has no depth, found Murphy’s Golden Globe-nominated performance and the screenplay’s depiction of Kitten to be strong and believable.
“Breakfast on Pluto” also has a very cool ’70s soundtrack, playing off the era in which the picture is set and turns Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey” into a song of seduction. That, in itself, is a pretty good trick.
Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.