Movie Review: F/X (1986)

Genre: Thriller  

Director: Robert Mandel  

Starring: Bryan Brown, Brian Dennehy, Diana Venora, Cliff De Young, Jerry Orbach  

Running Time: 108 minutes  

Synopsis: In New York City, movie special effects expert Rollie Tyler (Bryan Brown) is hired by Justice Department official Lipton (Cliff De Young) to stage the death of mob informer DeFranco (Jerry Orbach). But immediately after the fake assassination, Rollie finds himself a target and realizes he has been set-up, with his girlfriend Ellen (Diana Venora) also endangered. Rollie has to use his special effects skills to escape and clear his name, while gruff police Detective McCarthy (Brian Dennehy) wades into the case.

What Works Well: A relatively innovative premise creates intriguing opportunities for melding visual tricks of the screen into the "real" movie-created world. Bryan Brown is lithe and suave in the central role, and Brian Dennehy as a frumpy battering ram of a detective provides a good counterpoint. Director Robert Mandel ensures brisk pacing and high-energy chase and action scenes.

What Does Not Work As Well: The plot mechanics are ludicrous to the point of not even attempting an explanation. Rollie transitions, in a quite a hurry, from a regular Joe to an all-action hero with secret agent abilities and willingness to use lethal force. The whiff of a B-movie is accentuated by clunky dialogue and amateurish secondary performances, with Martha Gehman as Rollie's assistant suffering the most.

Key Quote:

Ellen: Nobody cares about making movies about people any more. All they care about is special effects.

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Movie Review: Cocktail (1988)

Genre: Buddy Drama 

Director: Roger Donaldson  

Starring: Tom Cruise, Elisabeth Shue, Bryan Brown  
Running Time: 103 minutes  

Synopsis: Brian Flanagan (Tom Cruise) leaves the Army and heads to New York City with dreams of making big money. But lacking any college education, he fails to land a corporate job. Veteran bartender Doug Coughlin (Bryan Brown) gives Brian an opportunity as a bartender, and the two men become friends, developing an energetic rapport behind the bar. Brian pursues college business courses, but after a falling out with Doug, he relocates to Jamaica where romance blossoms with the wholesome Jordan (Elisabeth Shue).

What Works Well: Director Roger Donaldson injects energy into the ultimately absurd spectacle of bartender showmanship. Aside from the juggling bottles act, the Doug Coughlin character is an intriguing study in complexity, manipulation, and false wisdom, while the thorny friendship between Doug and Brian exposes the pitfalls of male camaraderie when fueled by the warped metrics of greed and lust. 

What Does Not Work As Well: Seemingly packaged for the primary purpose of promoting soundtrack and poster sales, this is a superficial drama built upon unlikeable characters consumed by narcissism and meanness. Instead of exploring the dangers of the darkness within, Brian is presented as a celebration-worthy central character, despite never maturing beyond a toxic mix of selfishness and juvenile aggression. In a milieu rich with equal opportunity self-absorption, the women who enter the lives of Doug and Brian are either vapid, conniving, or possessing spectacularly poor judgment.

Key Quote:

Doug: The luck is gone / the brain is shot / but the liquor we still got.



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Movie Review: Australia (2008)

A grand adventure and romance with a World War Two backdrop, Australia features plenty of spirit, incident, and visual beauty, almost justifying its mammoth length.

In 1939, Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) travels from England to remote northern Australia to admonish her philandering husband. He is operating the fledgling Faraway Downs cattle ranch and locked in a land battle with evil cattle baron King Carney (Bryan Brown), who is seeking to monopolize beef supplies to the army as World War Two rumbles to life.

Upon arrival Sarah meets Drover (Hugh Jackman), an independent cattle driver, then discovers her husband murdered. She fires foreman Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), who is secretly working for Carney to undermine Faraway Downs. Also on the ranch is young mixed-race child Nullah (Brandon Walters), who is in danger of being forcibly scooped up by the government and placed in a religious school. Sarah bonds with Nullah, who has a strong spiritual relationship with his Aboriginal grandfather King George (David Gulpilil).

Sarah teams up with Drover to drive her cattle on a treacherous journey to Darwin, where she hopes to break Carney's monopoly. But Fletcher is determined to stop them, while punishing Japanese air raids bring the war to the country's doorstep.

An epic running for 2 hours and 45 minutes, Australia attempts to capture the identity of a nation. Directed, co-produced, and co-written by Baz Luhrmann, the film is infused with an independent, can-do attitude, a strong bond between people and nature, and no shortage of visual beauty within the vastness of a sparsely populated continent. Also prominent is a sneaky sense of humour, essential to survive the physical and emotional hardships of forging a nation with pure toil.

Luhrmann unapologetically embraces sentimental, romantic, overblown, and old-fashioned grandeur. He also freely borrows nation-defining themes from epics like Gone With The Wind (1939), Red River (1948), and especially Once Upon A Time In The West (1968). Notably, a woman is most influential in taming the land, Lady Ashley discovering her motherly instincts, refusing to yield to the will of a corrupt competitor, standing up to ill-conceived government policy (doubtless drafted by men), and never giving up on Nullah when all seems lost. She points the direction to a more virtuous future, and inspires good men like Drover to hustle the country along.

The mixed identity of Nullah represents Australia's dual European and Aboriginal heritage. Both the child and his grandfather King George possess a mystical association with nature, contributing to several highlight scenes including a mammoth cliff-hanging (literally) stampede. Once Sarah connects with Nullah (through an overused reference to Over The Rainbow) and witnesses boorish officers causing him misery, she intrinsically understands the future has to celebrate, not conceal and suppress, the coming together of two cultures.

Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman create a likeable couple with no shortage of chemistry, both displaying necessary doses of frontier stubbornness and feistiness. Bryan Brown and David Wenham occupy the opposite corner with suitable malevolence. Young Brandon Walters is instantly amiable as a child caught between two civilizations.

The centrepiece epic cattle drive is both exhilarating and exhausting to watch, and finds a celebratory climax. Remarkably, a whole additional hour is to come, the relationship between Sarah and Drover facing a serious crisis and the country now firmly in the shadow of Japanese air force hostilities. It may not be short nor subtle, but Australia unabashedly celebrates ambition and audacity.



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Movie Review: Winter Of Our Dreams (1981)

An ardent drama, Winter Of Our Dreams chases flickers of hope fading into the dark corners of the soul. The grim tones are amplified by unsentimental realism.

Suffering from depression, 30 year-old aspiring folk singer-songwriter Lisa Blain commits suicide. In her final hours she tries but fails to reconnect with bookshop owner Rob (Bryan Brown), a friend from her happier college days, and gifts her guitar to her only friend, prostitute Lou (Judy Davis).

Rob is living in an open marriage with his wife Gretel (Cathy Downes). He hears about Lisa's suicide and starts to explore her life with the intention of writing an article. He connects with Lou and they establish a friendship of sorts. Lou is reading Lisa's diary and knows how much Rob meant to her during their days of idealistic activism, although Ron downplays the relationship. Lou is drawn to Rob, tracing Lisa's infatuation.

Set in Sidney, Winter Of Our Dreams explores the slow decay of dreams towards death. Australian writer and director John Duigan commits to an uncompromising tone, humour and happiness all but banished from the life of his characters. The film is uneven, sometimes slow even within the 89 minutes of running time, and starts to re-plough the same terrain in its second half. But the sense of despair coupled with authenticity carries undeniable impact.

With Lisa's suicide underpinning the narrative, Winter Of Our Dreams starts with Rob seeking to understand how his former friend plummeted from the heady days of college and political protests to taking her own life. But midway, Duigan transitions to Lou's perspective as the glare of her increasingly dead-end life grows stronger. The hand-off between the two characters shortchanges the investment in Rob, as he spends the second half of the film stranded in inert emotional space.

Judy Davis is in scintillating form and animates Lou as the woman spiralling into drug-addiction and prostitution, Lisa's fate now a warning sign along a dangerous path. Rob's appearance offers an unexpected avenue for potential escape, and the final third focuses on the contrast between her filthy almost-living-on-the-street reality and his suburban bliss. Rob's nonchalant openness places vague salvation tantalizingly within Lou's reach, but while she embraces the nose-against-the-window opportunity to escape her wannabe boyfriend and drug supplier, Lisa's diary is also a warning about mismatched expectations.

Winter Of Our Dreams is a bleak experience, primitive urban survival gasping for breath against the crushing weight of dimming expectations.



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