Sunrise (2024)

Sunrise

I have always known that I will watch any film in which Guy Pearce appears. In fact, I even started a series in this regard and sometimes think of resuming it (working my way through his entire filmography). I should say working through Pearce’s entire filmography again because I’ve seen almost every film he’s featured in, from Heaven Tonight up until this newest release, Sunrise.

This has been quite the journey particularly since the last 10 years or so have comprised mainly strange (and not very good) independent pictures featuring Australia’s greatest actor as their stand-out talent who is there to rescue an otherwise sinking ship. And 2024’s Sunrise is no different: if he hadn’t been giving it all as the villain of the piece, I’d have turned it off early.

Sunrise marks Pearce’s second time working with director Andrew Baird after last year’s sci-fi caper Zone 414 which was equally terrible. This time round they’re going for a horror-Western vibe dealing with small town American racism and increasing rural extremism.

We start with the exposition that explains the legend of the Red Coat – a First People myth that is kind of like a vampire for this story. Then we meet Joe Reynolds (Pearce), who is basically his small town’s political/business/criminal heavyweight kingpin. Reynolds kills Mr Loi (Chike Chan) an immigrant who happens to own some desirable land leaving his wife Yan (Crystal Lu), son Edward (William Gao) and daughter Emily (Riley Chung) destitute and traumatised. A few months later, from out of the forest comes Fallon (Alex Pettyfer): a mysterious stranger thirsty for blood and revenge against Reynolds.

Baird knows how to direct a movie but doesn’t quite capture that haunted Pacific Northwest feel he’s clearly reaching for; Ronan Blaney tries to address too many contemporary issues within a revenge Western structure, but the pacing never quickens to make it interesting; characters talk out how they feel, but it never feels real or lived in; Blaney’s script doesn’t give his actors those show stopping monologues that the script is so clearly hanging its hat on there’s one that comes close, when Reynolds loses his shit and essentially screams a Trump stump speech but it still doesn’t land as gracefully as it should.

What about Pearce in this? What does a super-fan of Australia’s greatest actor think? He’s showing up for sure. Even when he sleepwalks through a performance, he’s always watchable. But I don’t know if I would say that he shows up here. His American accent is more of a constant growl and you can tell he’s working out some things about our worst public figures from recent history with this character.

The script gives him a goofy caricature to play with and Pearce grabs hold of it like only someone who knows they’re making something bad can (see what I mean?). Without him, like I said: probably would’ve turned it off. Not much else nice to say about Sunrise but also don’t want to slam everyone involved making movies is hard sometimes they just don’t work. It helps if you’ve got an actor like Pearce in your corner though because then even the most troubled product becomes worth watching.

Watch Sunrise For Free On Gomovies.