REVIEW OF ‘PIXIE’, AMAZON PRIME’S FAST-PACED HEIST ACTION COMEDY FILM STARRING THE EFFERVESCENT OLIVIA COOKE

 

WE FIRST noticed Olivia Cooke as Emma in the TV series “Bates Motel” (a prequel to the movie “Psycho”) which ran from 2013-2017 and we got watch all its episodes. 

She also did several films like “Me & Earl & The Dying Girl”, “Ouija”, “Ready Player One” and “Sound of Metal”. She’s also in “House of the Dragon”, the upcoming prequel to “Game of Thrones”.

She’s actually a British actress and now, she’s back in Ireland doing a heist-comedy film, “Pixie”, where she plays the title role and her perky performance alone is reason enough to watch the movie.

 “Pixie” will remind you of other hilarious heist films like “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”, “True Romance” and “Snatch”. 

The movie starts with two blokes going to a church to get a stash of illegal drugs from priests. We gather they got the tip from Pixie herself and one of them is seriously in love with her and willing to do anything for her. 

This episode ends with a lot of killings and one of the blokes kills his friend out of jealousy when he learns his friend is having an affair with Pixie.

Pixie’s dream is to escape from Sligo, their suffocating small town, and start a new life in San Francisco, California.  

In a bar, she meets two young men who immediately get so infatuated with her, Frank (Ben Hardy of “The Voyeurs”) and Harland (Daryl McCormack). They follow her into her house and the film becomes a comedy of errors. We don’t want to share most details as it’ll be a sure spoiler. 

Suffice it to say that the newly minted trio of Pixie and amateur accomplices, Frank and Harland, become partners in crime who try to swindle their way to success when there are grave threats from criminal gangs strewn along their way. 

They end up with a big bag full of drugs and they don’t have an inkling on how to deal with their ill gotten loot. 

The film becomes an exciting road trip as they try to sell the drugs, with Pixie even opening the eyes of Frank and Harland about the possibilities of relating better with their families, even sharing her views with them on love and sexuality.

Pixie is the stepdaughter of a local Irish crime lord, Dermot O’Brien (Colm Meaney), who with her older brother (Turlough Convery) who envies her and hates her guts, start pursuing her and her friends relentslly to get the drugs back. 

Also after their necks is a deadly and ruthless hired assassin. 

Then there’s a group of deadly gun-toting gangster priests and nuns led by Alec Baldwin as Fr. Hector McGratth, who also want to get the stash for themselves as it’s really meant for them originally. 

As may be expected, the film offers a high body count, with lots of violent graphic death scenes and bloody shootouts.  

Despite all the violence, Director Barnaby Thompson manages to stay on the right side of witty and quirky, making “Pixie” quite a charming joyride that pays tribute to action-comedy directors like Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino, starting with its opening caption in the opening credits: “Once Upon a Time in the West... Of Ireland”. 

And the cinematography does feature beautiful scenery of the Irish rolling countryside.

The film is meant to be a showcase for Cooke’s engaging and goofy effervescence that fully embraces even the film’s absurdity. 

And no one among the other cast members manages to steal the limelight from her. Hardy and McCormack manage to hold their own as her trusting sidekicks but, in the end, they get the shock of their lives when they discover that she still manages to put one over them for the film’s final twist.