Joe is a painfully shy individual who has trouble interacting with others on the most basic of social levels. His only rock is his older brother, John. However John becomes the victim of a vicious attack and later dies, with Joe finding it hard to cope with his death until he meets Piggy, who becomes Joe’s form of vengeance upon the men who took his brother’s life.
Piggy is the debut feature of Kieron Hawkes and although it has some promise it falls short in rather a lot of places and features some very amateurish film narrative techniques. The main one of these is voiceover, which is uses far too much. It feels like something Hawkes falls back on just to make sure his audience knows what’s going on, and does it in a rather overbearing way. Considering the calibre of actors on board, this seems like a rather poor way of telling the story.
The film finally starts to flow once Piggy gets on the scene, played at a bearable over the top level by Paul Anderson. Unfortunately, the film falls into a rather obvious plot line once the killing begins. Joe is never really filled out as a character, despite being on screen for pretty much the whole of the film, so it is difficult to feel any empathy towards him. Often the film feels much like its far superior vengeance film companion, Dead Man’s Shoes but once the finale finally arrives it leaves you rather underwhelmed. The last 20 minutes of the film feel like Hawkes built up a story and doesn’t really know how to tie it all together.
The DVD comes with some standard extras, including interviews with key players Kieron Hawkes, Paul Anderson and, Martin Compston. Within these they largely in the standard film interview way talk about how amazing the script was and how working with everyone was lovely. However we also get insight into how the film was developed in a rather concise making of ’. Focussing heavily on the pre-production side, you get a feel for how Hawkes is quite a down to earth director, which may be one of the reason the film is somewhat lacklustre in places. He just hasn’t got that edge that keeps the audience gripped throughout the movie. Unfortunately after watching the making of ’ you realise that the rest of the special features are edited into interviews from this, so overall the special features are below par.
Overall Verdict: A rather uninspiring thriller with little to keep the audience gripped throughout, coming off as a poor man’s vengeance movie, spoon feeding too much to the audience but at the same time not giving enough time for the characters to fill out.
Special Features:
Interview w/ Kieron Hawkes
Interview w/ Paul Anderson
Interview w/ Martin Compton
Making of
Reviewer: Gareth Haworth