The Rover.

The film opens by informing us that it has been ten years since the collapse, we surmise that it was an economic collapse! Its scarily how it reflects a very believable future and one can imagine that the world could easily be heading into a dystopian community - so expertly demonstrated in this Australian movie.  If most of the austerity-obsessed governments of today do not change course from their illegal wars and there willingness to line the pockets of the rich then god help us all - we could all be hanging from telegraph poles!

 

Hope thats not my car?

You will recognise writer, director and producer David Michod from his previous award-winning debut feature film Animal Kingdom (2010) a brilliant study of Melbourne’s criminal underbelly that was inspired by a real life family. Similar to this previous movie, The Rover (2014) has some well-defined characters that all live on the edge of society and are portrayed with great panache, right down to even the smallest parts.   

 

Eric wants his motor back - at all costs!

Rey owes his brother - big time.

The main character is Eric, a man more than capable of killing in cold blood with little remorse; he is a man with anger problems who seems to find the situation of surviving in an apocalyptic landscape, where life appears to be worthless, quite normal. Even a goods train has armed mercenaries to guard it! During the course of the film we find out that Eric is an ex soldier and farmer whose wife is dead and his only possession is his car. A trio of criminals steals the vehicle and Eric sets out to get it back at all costs. During a road trip through thinly populated dirt towns and across the desolate barren landscape’s to catch the perpetrators he meets up with Rey, whose brother is one of the crooks and who left him for dead following a botched robbery. It’s the dynamics between Eric and the dim witted Rey that forms the basic narrative of this movie. 

 

Thats what all the fuss is about, the saloon car on the right. 

A very hard-faced film that’s full of subtext, tone and tension, made even more atmospheric by the female DOP Natasha Braier who manages to make the landscape a character in its own right, along with a great soundtrack from Antony Partos, but at certain points it can be a very emotional movie in a quite unique way. The films success owes a lot to it’s casting and as I’ve said its full of strange characters but the two main leads are superb. Guy Pearce, who Michod admits he wrote the part for, plays Eric, a difficult part for any actor that’s made to look easy by the versatile Pearce. The biggest surprise is Robert Pattinson, best known for his role in the Twilight Trilogy, who is extraordinary good as Rey and bears no resemblance to his normal heartthrob persona instead giving what I would think is his best role to date. Add this movie to your ‘must see list’ and I can guarantee you will not regret it.   

Animal Kingdom

We come to the end of another eight-film season of the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club with the award winning Australian “family” crime drama Animal Kingdom (2010). Directed and written by David Michod, his debut feature film, its loosely inspired by the real life Pettingill family including their matriarch fondly known as “Granny Evil” Pettingill, Melbourne’s answer to Violet Kray, and also the Walsh Street police shootings that occurred in Melbourne in 1988. Michod film offers a look beyond the gloss of the city normal life to its criminal underbelly, and how well he does it.

Granny loves her boys.

This is a strong character movie that puts your in the mind of The Wire. The film opens with a women and a 17 year-old boy sitting in front of a TV, the women appears to be a sleep, then the medic’s arrive and we learn that this is the boys mother and she’s died from a heroin overdose. The boy, Joshua Cody, is very laid back about this tragedy and telephones his grandmother Janine ‘Smurf’ Cody, whom it appears he has had no contact for many years; she agrees to take the lad in. It’s at his “loving” granny’s that he eventually meets his three uncles. The eldest is Andrew Pope Cody a psychopath on the run from the law, drug dealing Craig Cody and the dim witted Darren along with their associate Barry Brown bank robber and dabbler in stocks and shares: all four are career criminals. The corrupt local law enforcement officers take the law into their own hands and kill Barry Brown in cold blood, it’s this action that triggers the chain of events that follows.   

Make no mistake about it, this is one superb Australian movie, one that will thrill and hold your attention. The main players are exceptional and the three that deserve a special mention are Jacki Weaver, who was nominated for a Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at this years Oscars for her portrayal of blond, brassy and slightly incestuous grandma. Ben Mendelsohn, who can be seen in Baz Luhrmann 2008 masterpiece Australia and the brilliant Beautiful Kate (2009), plays the evil Pope Cody. The best-known face is probably Guy Pearce who plays what seems to be the only honest cop in the film, Detective Nathan Leckie tasked with bringing in our criminal tribe. The violence is handled discreetly, music is sparingly used but the main reasons to make sure you don’t miss this movie is its strong story and Jacki Weavers performance.

Link to Beautiful Kate.

http://brianmatthews60.blogspot.com/search/label/Beautiful%20Kate