The Rover (MA)
Starring: Guy Pearce, Robert Pattinson
IMAGINE a broken, ruined Australia after an economic collapse.
Trains with Chinese logos on them have armed security, the US dollar is more popular than ours, guns are currency and dogs are food.
Australia has a much more Asian face, the army is focused on internal security, not outside threats, and the rule of law is a memory.
Every day is a nightmare of loss and longing for the world as it was.
In this dystopian desert landscape is Guy Pearce who plays Eric, a burnt-out husk of a man who shuffles through a dead world with a dead heart.
When a gang steals his car, it sparks a world of retribution in a road movie of horrors.
The violence is swift and sharp and clean; the tension reminiscent of “Snowtown”.
It’s hard to know what to make of this film which, in the Australian context, is unlike any that has come before it.
The second feature for David Michod, after Animal Kingdom, it is certainly a very different film to that one.
This is a serious attempt to make a properly dark, grown-up Australian film noir.
And while it doesn’t quite get there, it certainly represents a very worthy attempt.
Be braced for violence that can leave you literally gasping, and a major plot reveal, Planet of the Apes-style, in the final scene.
– Jason Beck
