- Actors: Cillian Murphy, Lucy Liu, Josh Pais, Mark Harelik, Heather Burns.
- Format: Widescreen, NTSC.
- Language: English.
- Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only).
- Run Time: 94 minutes. Not Rated.
BREAKFAST ON PLUTO - DVD MovieBoth epic and intimate,
Breakfast on Pluto uses the life of Patrick "Kitten" Braden (Cillian Murphy,
Batman Begins), a queer orphan boy, to explore the hidden worlds that lie beneath so-called "normal" society--the subcultures of homosexuals, the Irish Republican Army, and prostitutes. At odds with his conservative Irish town, Patrick rebels with the fearlessness of someone whose life feels worthless. When he leaves for London, where he hopes to find his mother, he joins a touring rock band, is almost murdered, becomes assistant to a magician (Stephen Rea,
The Crying Game), is arrested as an IRA terrorist, and joins a pee! p show--and those are only half of the markers on his odyssey (the movie struggles to encompass the novel by Patrick McCabe). Though the first half of the movie feel almost weightless in the headlong rush of events, a rich emotional heft sneaks up on you; by the end,
Breakfast on Pluto has become almost unbearably sad and wonderfully buoyant. Murphy's superb performance is both delicate and willful, ably supported by an excellent cast, including Liam Neeson (
Kinsey), Brendan Gleeson (
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), and Ian Hart (
Backbeat), as well as rock stars Gavin Friday and Bryan Ferry (who has a particularly creepy cameo as a serial killer).
--Bret FetzerWidescreen DVD
Breakfast on Pluto, Patrick McCabe's lyrical and haunting new novel, became a #1 bestseller in Ireland, stayed on the bestseller list for months, and was nominated for the Booker Prize, one of the world's most prestigious literary awards. With wonderful ! delicacy and subtle insight and intimation, McCabe creates Mr.! Patrick "Pussy" Braden, the enduringly and endearingly hopeful hero(ine) whose gutsy survival and yearning quest for love resonate in and drive the glimmering, agonizing narrative in which the troubles are a distant and immediate echo and refrain. Twenty years ago, her ladyship escaped her hometown of Tyreelin, Ireland, fleeing her foster mother Whiskers (prodigious Guinness-guzzler, human chimney) and her mad household, to begin a new life in London. There, in blousey tops and satin miniskirts, she plies her trade, often risking life and limb amongst the flotsam and jetsam that fill the bars of Piccadilly Circus. But suave businessmen and lonely old women are not the only dangers that threaten Pussy. It is the 1970's and fear haunts the streets of London and Belfast as the critical mass of history builds up, and Pussy is inevitably drawn into a maelstrom of violence and tragedy destined to blow his fragile soul asunder. Brilliant, startling, profound and soaring, Breakfast on P! luto combines light and dark, laughter and pain, with such sensitivity, directness and restraint that the dramatic impact reverberates in our minds and hearts long after the initial impression.
Patrick McCabe hit pay dirt with his third novel,
The Butcher Boy, which was short-listed for the 1992 Booker Prize, filmed by Neil Jordan, and acclaimed as "a masterpiece of literary ventriloquism." In his fifth,
Breakfast on Pluto, also on the Booker shortlist, McCabe produces another inimitable voice to amuse and infuriate, mimicking perfectly the overwrought, near-hysterical style of a character whose emotional processes were cruelly halted somewhere around the age of 14, and whose tale requires English literature's highest concentration of exclamation marks.
Patrick "Pussy" Brady is recording her memoirs for the mysterious Dr. Terence, and it's quite some story. After randy Father Bernard gets carried away with his temporary housekeeper, a ! dead ringer for Mitzi Gaynor, the result is Patrick Braden, a! bandoned on a doorstep in a Rinso box and condemned to a foster home with the alcoholic Hairy Braden. Escape comes in fantasies of Vic Damone and the occasional glitzy frock, and eventually, inevitably, the rebaptised "Pussy" heads for life as a transvestite rent boy on Piccadilly's Meat Rack. But this is not just Pussy's story; as hitherto-muffled paramilitary violence blows up in her face, Pussy falls apart, providing a vivid and unsettling final comment on the human price paid in 1970s Ireland. --Alan StewartNeil (Cillian Murphy) works in a vintage video store and wishes his life could be as exciting as the movies he watches night and day. Enter Violet (Lucy Liu), a real-life femme fatale who brings enough adventure into Neil's world to make him think he has suddenly stepped into one of his favorite movies. Being with Violet might just turn out to be a lot of fun - if he lives through it.
