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Review

At the start of Peacock - a '50s-based identity thriller named after the fictional Nebraska town where it is set - Cillian Murphy's character lives peacefully as two completely different people.

During the day he's John Skillpa, a painfully shy, dutiful bank employee. After 5:00 PM, he goes home and becomes Emma, an uncommonly demure maternal figure who fixes John's meals and communicates with him through simple grocery lists and love notes. We learn, through the course of the film, that John has been alternating personalities since the death of his abusive mother, that he and Emma are unaware of each other's actions, and that he seems quite content living this way.

John, dressed as Emma, is hanging clothes in the back yard when a train car derails and crashes onto his property. His idyllic co-existence is jeopardized as the accident generates much unwanted attention. Soon, all of the neighbors want to know the identity of the mysterious new woman who lives in his house. Things get even more complicated when Fanny Crill (Susan Sarandon), the wife of a well-respected Nebraska senator, arrives to meet Emma. Fanny, wishing to use John and Emma's yard as the backdrop for an upcoming political rally, appeals to Emma's sense of female empowerment. Having developed a taste for social interaction and helping other people, Emma starts taking desperate measures to usurp John's life entirely and become the only inhabitant of his body.

While paying obvious homage to Hitchcock and, more specifically, Psycho (John is pretty much Norman Bates without the murderous tendencies), director Michael Lander manages to weave a consistently unconventional story that surprises the viewer at each turn. Also worth noting is the quaint appeal of the "1950s, small-town-Nebraska" setting, which never falters. Cillian Murphy, no stranger to acting in drag (see Breakfast on Pluto) is exceptionally endearing as Emma while every other member of the impressive cast - which also includes Ellen Page, Josh Lucas, Keith Carradine and Bill Pullman - turns in a solid supporting performance.

 -- Robert O'Neill