Nerdly » ‘The Peacemakers’ Review

07th Jul2022

‘The Peacemakers’ Review

by Alain Elliott

Stars: Noah Paul, Kylah Carree, Rick Didham, Thomas MacKinnon, Craig Hubert, Kevin Powe, Erica Kroger, Aaron Catano-Saez, Dave Luukkonen | Written and Directed by Svyatoslav Nikitin

The Peacemakers is a slightly unusual low-budget sci-fi movie for a lot of reasons. One of the main reasons is that it’s pretty damn good and full of ideas, although you wouldn’t get that from the synopsis alone.

The Peacemakers themselves are two mysterious figures dressed all in black – long coats, trousers, boots and hats, along with black bandages covering their entire faces – who arrive on Earth to hunt for a renegade. But there’s much more to their visit and the whole fate of the planet is in their hands.

The real stand out feature of the movie is how it looks. It has a very unique style which heavily involves light and colour. The three main characters themselves – the two ‘partners’ and the renegade – basically look the same but for eyes and mouth have light to show some sort of facial feature. The lights move when they talk and they have the same colour on their hats. So each character features one colour with their black outfits, green, blue and red. This is surprisingly effective, not only in knowing which character is which but just because it looks really cool as well. Each character also has a gun too which lights up and shoots in the same colour.

As cool as these costumes are, it’s not just about that. Other than the guns they have another ‘weapon’ that kind of rewinds time and it’s a kind of cool-looking ball that glows yellow. There’s a scene where it gets hit and the air sparkles and shines with the star-like objects that appear. Most of the film is set during nighttime, making the effects look even better and the use of light is fantastic and gives The Peacemakers its very own, and very cool sense of style.

The cinematography overall is very impressive and original. It’s a really well shot film and even the end credits are pretty wonderful.

The story itself is a bit on the light side, there’s not a whole lot to it and it just about fills its seventy-five minute run time. It’s not a bad script, there’s just not a whole lot of substance to it.

We get this sci-fi-noir-thriller involving a very clichéd ‘two crime partners that don’t really get on. But although it’s clichéd, it does work and there are some genuinely funny moments and one-liners. The script tries a lot of these one-liners throughout and it mostly works at producing laughs.

Because the movie leans heavier on comedy, the attempt at some sort of emotional impact at the end of the movie doesn’t quite work. I wasn’t into the characters and their relationship enough to be emotionally affected like the filmmakers probably desired.

Although some side characters seem pretty much pointless, the film runs along at a good pace with the right amount of action and witty dialogue. I doubt I’ll see a more visually impressive sci-fi movie for a long time, there’s much to enjoy with The Peacemakers.