This film was a pleasant surprise for me among the mass of today's Hollywood productions. The movie is a bit different in its rhythm and mood from as we are expected from its genre. It tries to combine the western and the thriller style, and I think it has succeeded.
The movie narrates a story of a lonely detective who tries to hunt down the murderer of a young girl in the remote and sparsely inhabited territory of Australia. But the movie is intended to be real, and makes a great effort in order to achieve that. It tries to show us the everyday life of a lonesome ranger in a realistic way. Thus, it could give us a totally different picture than the Hollywood action-stuffed blockbusters can provide.
We can hardly see a single gun in use throughout the whole movie, but somehow it manages to attract the attention of the audience. The newer and newer details of the crime are revealed in a nicely right pace. Sometimes, during the interrogation of a person I've already known what the detective's following question would be. But not the teeming clichés are responsible for that (because there were any), but the adequate atmosphere what the movie could have created, because it's able to involve the audience and encourage them to investigate along with the protagonist.
At the beginning I felt the fact a bit weird, that almost every single member of the town were totally unfriendly with the detective, even a few years old tiny kid, who was brave enough to announce without batting an eyelid that he'd take the detective's life. But later I realized, that I wouldn't be really happy too, if a ranger wanted to ask me a few question about a murder. However, not only these people were raw to the protagonist, but the other policeman were pretty arrogant either. We can feel the tension in almost every moment of an interrogation, because the conversations are usually interrupted with awkward silence, because the detective could hardly pull out the valuable information out of the people. That's why the dialgoues are occasionally a bit silly, but there are some moments when they're quite funky and gripping.
Nevertheless, the actors did a fine job, as far as some of them had only little opportunity to prevail on the silver screen. I admit, that it wasn't Hugo Weaving's most outstanding performance, as we could see him acting far better in the Matrix or in The Lord of the Rings. But I couldn't blame him for that, because his character was really obnoxious in this movie. I could have accused him at his first appearance on the screen, like almost any other people in the movie, except the protagonist.
We can hardly hear any music or soundtrack throughout the movie (only one or two), but it simply draws benefits from that, because the movie could create a much more depressing atmosphere int hat way. The film could perfectly visualize in front of our eyes, that the detectives don't have as fast-paced life as we could experience that in the high- budget Hollywood movie, but they are much slower, tedious, tiresome and difficult. The film owns a nearly 2 hours long runtime, thanks to the fact in part, that it has taken up the conventional towed style of the western genre. There are some moment, when we could see the characters looking at each for a quite long time period without moving or saying a word. But it had to be like this! So no worries!
If You'd like to experience a life-like investigation in a realistically implemented environment in the company of a logically built up storyline, than I can bravely recommend You this movie! Buti f You wanna see some action scenes speeding by right after other, and You don't wanna get slowed down, then this movie will not be your cup of tea.
Thanks for spending your precious free time with reading my review! Hope you liked it!
