When the gunfight’s over, two of the Burns gang are in custody, Mikey, the simple-minded youngest brother and Charlie (Guy Pearce), the middle brother. The capture of these two has brought only a partial closure to a terrible event that happened before the film begins – the murder of the Hopkins family. What’s missing from this is that the oldest brother and leader of the bunch, Arthur, is still at large and is hiding in the harsh embrace of Australian bush country.

At first glance, the film setting could be the old American west but it takes place in the 19th century Australian outback and centers on the efforts of a police captain (Ray Winstone) to bring a gang of criminals to justice and on a bigger scale, a sense of civilization to a lawless frontier settlement. The Hopkins family murder has been made all the more horrific by the rape of Eliza Hopkins, the wife and mother, who also happened to be pregnant.

Captain Stanley, realizing that he would rather bring Arthur Burns to justice than to settle for just hanging Mike and Charlie, the least guilty in his mind, offers Charlie a proposition, which is simply that he bring Arthur in or kill him, in exchange for his and Mikey’s freedom. If Charlie does not carry this out within a certain time, the captain will hang Mikey Burns. Stanley is gambling on his sense of loyalty and protectiveness towards his younger brother. Charlie sets out to find Arthur but complications arise as Captain Stanley’s arrogant superior, Eden Fletcher (played loathesomely by David Wenham) undermines his deal by ordering the potentially fatal flogging of Mikey Burns. The subsequent events take turns not anticipated by any of the participants.

This film has been said to visually resemble the nightmarish world of the novel, ‘Blood Meridian’, by Cormac McCarthy and having read the book several times, would have to agree. Director Hillcoat and cinematographer Benoit Delhomme have created a world where you can feel the heat shimmering off rock, where swarms of flies abound and where harsh, gritty, unforgiving terrain and conditions coexist with stunning sunsets, moonrises and beautiful alien vistas. Another parallel to ‘Blood Meridian’ is that of a pervading sense of ‘manifest destiny’ on the part of the white settlers, channeled through the character of Captain Stanley, (‘I will civilize this land’),as they attempt to impose their sense of order and law on a primitive, chaotic but natural world. The indigenous aborigine population is treated like their U.S. counterparts, the Native-Americans, with the same patronizing colonialist attitude and like the Native-Americans, strike back in their way.

Nick Cave has written a very good screenplay although I found parts of the dialogue a bit clunky and stiff at times. The acting more than compensated however, Winstone’s noble but realistic police captain, Guy Pearce’s portrayal of Charlie, a brutal man with a shred of conscience, Danny Huston as the oldest brother Arthur, a poetry reciting cold-blooded killer and Emily Watson as Martha Stanley, the captain’s wife who desperately tries to maintain her own personal sense of civilized life in the middle of the madness. This is more than just a story of revenge and justice gone wrong – it blurs the lines between society/authorities and the criminals as the local townspeople and law officers allow their own blood lust and violence to dominate.

There were a couple of other minor issues with the story line and peripheral characters who, by the film’s end had just disappeared, leaving me to wonder what had happened to them. The underlying examination of evil in the film also seemed somewhat basic and not particularly profound but it fit the story. This is a great looking film in its setting and was well cast in terms of the extras and lesser characters, contributing to the sense of harsh realism that pulls the viewer in and although set in Australia, should take its place in the western genre of film.

Marc Goldin currently lives in Chicago, with three cats, each one more long-haired than the last. Interests have ranged from medieval monasticism to discontinued stations on the London Underground – literary likes too diverse (some would say schizo) to list here although the last several years have been witness to an intimacy with Scottish and Irish literature. American Southern and Beat era lit also account for some of the ‘missing years’. Music tastes run the gamut from Cuban Danzon to Ska (all three waves but having a specific attachment to the second, two-tone period) to the Tuvan throat singers. Has written book reviews for a now defunct Irish literature site and has several short stories in various stages of development. Mad for black and white photography and aspires to someday have a complete collection of photos documenting every close in the Grassmarket area of Edinburgh. Works in the IT dept. of a French company in the current political climate. In football, supports Chelsea, Hibs, and for the sake of employment security, Marseille. For more articles and reviews by Marc on The New Review, click here

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.