Mystery Road (M)
Starring: Aaron Pedersen, Jack Thompson, Hugo Weaving
IF YOU like long, slow-burning movies about Indigenous issues, then settle in for this one.
Aboriginal all-star Aaron Pedersen takes the lead, as a detective returning to his outback home town to investigate the murder of a young Aboriginal girl.
Set in “outback anywhere” it seems odd to describe a film that mostly takes place in hard, flat sunlight as a film noir, but that’s what it is.
Director Ivan Sen has beautifully shot the outback in a way that conveys its sense of timelessness – the same sense of timelessness you’ll feel during this long, long film.
Sen works hard at conveying the flat, clipped, dry speech of Australian men.
The film’s eventual climax is a genre-busting shootout which combines both long and short-range combat, over several minutes, with no-one hitting anything particularly much. It’s an interesting take on the gunfight.
It’s a lyrical film which takes you somewhere else – you’ll just wish it was a little shorter, and you got to that other place a little more rapidly.
Still, in the wasteland of Australian films, it’s probably the best outing since the terrifying Snowtown.
– Jason Beck
