Movie Review: The Royal Hotel (2023)

Genre: Outback Drama  

Director: Kitty Green  

Starring: Julia Garner, Jessica Henwick, Hugo Weaving  

Running Time: 91 minutes  

Synopsis: Backpacking Canadian friends Hanna and Liv (Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick) are on a work-travel trip to Australia. After running out of money they accept bartender jobs at an isolated mining community. They have to endure a barely-civilized environment and nights full of rough, lusty, and drunken men, including the slightly refined Matt (Toby Wallace), innkeeper Billy (Hugo Weaving), the relatively quiet Teeth (James Frecheville) and the creepy Dolly (Daniel Henshall). Liv is outgoing and willing to enjoy the experience, but the more grounded Hanna is increasingly worried about their safety.

What Works Well: Director Kitty Green and star Julia Garner worked together on 2019's The Assistant, and here again contribute to an unsettling environment. The South Australia mining milieu is a time and place left behind by civilization, the men's pent-up isolation bubbling into boorishness and aggressive sexual advances during nightly drinking sprees. Garner and her co-star Jessica Henwick create a spiky friendship built on contrasting risk tolerance levels.

What Does Not Work As Well: A distinct absence of an actual plot becomes increasingly apparent after the opening act, eventually devouring the intriguing context. This is a tableau with characters but insufficient content, and sideways drift takes over. Men in coveralls sequentially gain then lose prominence, Hanna and Liv struggle in the absence of meaningful arcs, and a few plot points are just bewildering. A mysterious phone call from a previous bartender and the stern-faced cook who disapproves of everything but stops short of communicating hint at a story that never materializes.

Conclusion: Beware the featureless desert, where the promise of adventure can disappear into a mirage.



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Movie Review: Mystery Road (2013)

A rural crime mystery, Mystery Road is slow paced and soulful, inspired by desolate scenery but stymied by unfathomable plot points.

In a small Australian outback community, Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen) is the only aboriginal detective on the otherwise all-white and mistrusted police force. He is assigned the case of murdered aboriginal teenager Julie Mason, whose dead body is found dumped in a highway culvert. Swan reconnects with his still-hostile ex-wife Mary (Tasma Walton), but Julie's friends, including Swan's daughter Crystal, are reluctant to talk. 

Through observation and questioning, Swan uncovers the threads of a mystery involving a drug lab in the farmhouse of rancher Sam Bailey and his sharpshooter son Pete, addicted girls selling themselves to truckers in return for money to buy drugs, and hints of police corruption involving detective Johnno (Hugo Weaving), all possibly linked to the recent killing of another police officer. Swan has to sort out friend from foe and save his daughter from impending peril.

Mystery Road is both sparse and dense, a magnificent visual treat but also a test of perseverance. Australian writer and director Ivan Sen finds beauty in the outback's isolation, but also creates an almost impenetrable mystery littered with indistinct characters.

The depressingly barren setting creates its own gravitational pull, a place where the rest of the world doesn't matter. Life in the community clinging to the desert's edge is a daily struggle for relevance with plenty of empty time and space for evil to exploit. Swan is the misfit disrupter doggedly determined to find out why one young girl was killed, her body abandoned for the wild dogs to feast on, but also close enough to the highway to serve as a warning. 

Sen's pacing falls foul of repetitive scenes showing Swan pulling up in his car to talk - barely - to the next person of interest, gaining the tiniest morsel of new information then relocating to a variation of the same. The big-horizon spectacular red and orange scenery, enhanced by stunning silhouettes and straight overhead shots, does provide relief as tedium threatens to set in, but the conspiracy is still only revealed in dismissively disjointed fragments.

The simmering tension does finally erupt in a hail of bullets to place an exclamation mark upon a culture being eroded by nefarious agendas feeding on lack of opportunity, apprehension and suspicion. Mystery Road curves into a literal and metaphorical ambush from hell, even as the bad men behind all the guns remain frustratingly opaque.



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Movie Review: The Interview (1998)

A taut drama, The Interview is an intense psychological duel but delivers less than it promises.

In Australia, down-and-out loner Edward Fleming (Hugo Weaving) is arrested by detectives Steele (Tony Martin) and Prior (Aaron Jeffrey). At the police station Steele questions Fleming about a car theft related to the disappearance of a man called Beecroft. Fleming admits to being on a trip near where the car was stolen, but denies any crime. Throughout the interview Prior subjects Fleming to verbal abuse and threats.

The Beecroft case is part of Steele's dogged quest to identify and apprehend an elusive serial killer. The detective is renowned for his effectiveness in breaking witnesses but also his rough tactics, and is unaware the Fleming sessions are being secretly filmed by ethics officers. Steele's boss Inspector Jackson (Paul Sonkkila) wants to give his star detective leeway, but grows increasingly concerned any evidence derived from the interrogation will be inadmissible due to intimidation. Fleming starts to grow in confidence, and throws a huge twist into his testimony.

The debut feature from Craig Monahan, who also co-wrote the script, The Interview expands the interrogation scene familiar from countless crime movies into the full-frame focus. The concept carries echoes from 1995's The Usual Suspects, but here the flashbacks and recreations are limited to snippets, most of the action unfolding in grim grey-green tones within the four walls of the interrogation room.

The energy and tension are derived from the battle of wits between Fleming as the accused and Steele as the accuser, and the narrative arc traces Fleming's mood from startled victim to sly storyteller. The twists are dynamic and Monahan plays his cards smoothly, but unfortunately and in retrospect, The Interview offers less than meets the eye. Steele's line of questioning is quite linear and ultimately flimsy, opening expansive opportunities for Fleming to seize the initiative.

The momentum is also choppy, Monahan choosing to frequently interrupt the interchanges between Fleming and Steele. A side plot involving nosey reporter Barry Walls (Michael Caton) poking around the police station generally gets in the way. 

The ultimately edgeless scheming takes nothing away from two excellent central performances. Hugo Weaving is a shifty ruffled mess hiding a mind racing to outmaneuver his opponents, while Tony Martin hints at ice in the veins of a cold and calculating detective. The hunter and the prey are well dressed for battle, but deserved sharper weaponry.



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Movie Review: V For Vendetta (2005)

A dystopian political conspiracy thriller, V For Vendetta is a satisfyingly complex comic adaptation, delivered with plenty of vigour and bold style.

A near-future England is ruled by a fascist anti-immigration homophobic government under High Chancellor Adam Sutler (John Hurt). The rest of the world has disintegrated into chaos with a civil war raging in the United States. On Guy Fawkes night in London, a mysterious masked man known only as V (Hugo Weaving) initiates a surprise bombing of the Old Bailey, takes over the British Television Network and invites citizens to join him a year later at the demolition of the Houses of Parliament.

V's actions are partially witnessed by Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman), a young BTN employee, and he takes her into his hideout, a cavern filled with historical artwork. Head of New Scotland Yard Eric Finch (Stephen Rea) sets out to investigate, identify and capture V and Evey, while Sutler's head of security Peter Creedy (Tim Pigott-Smith) favours more repressive measures to put a stop to V's plans. With the big night approaching Finch gets closer to uncovering V's background, and in the process discovers a mammoth conspiracy at the origins of England's descent into dictatorship.

Directed by James McTeigue and co-written by the Wachowskis as an adaptation of a limited comic book series, V For Vendetta threads the needle to park its loyalties with counter-revolutionaries, bombers, and freedom fighters all in the name of a fight for justice against an oppressive regime. A film that remarkably gains in relevance with the passing years, V For Vendetta is brimming with plot and characters, 132 breathless minutes counting down to one defining midnight.

The movie almost suffers from too much going on, but it's all relevant, and incendiary themes abound. V launches a one-man campaign of terrorism, hoping to reignite the passion of a nation. Chancellor Sutler spreads his hateful anti-immigration and homophobic poison through propagandist television talking heads, including  the "Voice of London" Lewis Prothero (Roger Allam), all in the name of protecting the country against foreign turmoil. The Stockholm Syndrome is at the heart of the relationship between Evey and V.  A secret bioweapons program, human experiments and the creation of false crises are gradually revealed as dark plots at the heart of societal transformation, and even within a totalitarian regime, there are rivalries to be exploited.

In lesser hands the story could have spiraled out of control, but McTeigue allows the threads to intertwine with reasonably effortless beauty. V, Evey and Finch each get the necessary time to evolve and contribute, the film gaining in power as it glides towards a stunning climax.

Aesthetically V For Vendetta is a perfect comic adaptation, centred on a masked crusader and surrounding him with a grim city suffering through its darkest days. The film remains grounded in characters and real world physics and avoids ruinous excessive special effects, and even the grand ending is more about people than events.

Hugo Weaving dominates with his silky booming voice from behind a mask, a literate poet crusader unafraid to destroy in order to rebuild. Natalie Portman plays Evey as a victim and an inspiration, a young woman destined to first witness and then play a role at the crossroads of history.

Despite some oversaturation at the margins, V For Vendetta is rich in both spirit and provocation.

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Movie Review: Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

A war epic based on a true story, Hacksaw Ridge is the stunning story of a conscientious objector who stuck to his principles and found his purpose on a tortuous field of battle.

With World War Two rumbling to a start, Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) from rural Virginia enlists in the Army. Desmond grew up to despise violence, having been raised in a strictly religious family dominated by his father Tom (Hugo Weaving), a drunk, abusive and emotionally damaged World War One veteran. Desmond refuses to carry a weapon, and wants to serve his country as a medic. His anti-violence stance as a conscientious objector who nevertheless volunteered confounds the army. His unit Sergeant Howell (Vince Vaughn) tries to drum him out, while his squad mates, including Glover (Sam Worthington) and Riker (Luke Bracey) turn against him and label him a coward.

With help from an unlikely intervention by his father, Doss eventually gets his way, stays with the army, graduates as a medic, and marries his sweetheart, the nurse Dorothy (Teresa Palmer). His squad is dispatched to join the Battle of Okinawa, and quickly thrown into a meat grinder of a fight to dislodge the Japanese army from well-entrenched positions on top of a steep embankment labelled Hacksaw Ridge. With grim determination on both sides resulting in mass casualties on a brutal battlefield, the weaponless Doss will find his true calling.

Mel Gibson returns to the director's chair for the first time since 2006, and delivers a raw human story soaked in the blood and gore of battle. Hacksaw Ridge is an unflinching look at true heroism, and Gibson finds in Desmond Doss an assuming oddball, a deeply religious pacifist looking for his calling in the heat of battle. Doss won the Medal of Honor, and Hacksaw Ridge is a deeply satisfying salute to selfless courage.

The film is divided into three parts, with some flashbacks in the later scenes to fill in the gaps. The first third is an elegantly delivered coming of age love story, Desmond's background and formative years presented under the blazing sun of farm-bred innocence and the dark clouds of a damaged father figure. Key incidents from Doss's early life are efficiently presented, as he grows into a teenager willing to stand up to Tom, protective of his mother Bertha (Rachel Griffiths), and dogged in his pursuit of the ethereal Dorothy.

The middle of the film is a search for self: Doss knows he wants to be in the army, is insistent that he wants to go war without a weapon, and is stubborn about both obsessions to the point of taking on an incredulous army establishment. Slowly he garners a grudging respect among the fellow trainees who don't understand him, but even the grunts and sergeants begin to admire something intangible in the gangly kid with a goofy attitude but a core of steel.

The foundations solidly laid, Gibson moves confidently into the final act, shifting gears and creating nothing less than hell on earth. Taking the opening 27 minutes of Saving Private Ryan as just a starting point in the realistic representation of battle, Hacksaw Ridge goes beyond what is easily imaginable, presenting a harrowing close-up vision of war and its destructive impact on bodies and souls.

The Battle of Okinawa is recognized as one of the bloodiest of the entire conflict, with estimates of up to 130,000 soldiers killed, and is cited as one of the core reasons the decision was made to drop the atomic bombs on Japan. Gibson does not flinch from what this level of human carnage means: in a series of battles at close quarters, men are torn to pieces, guts are spilled, partial torsos are used as bullet shields, and rats feast on human remains. Death rains in from all directions, and Gibson leaves no doubt what the field of combat can do to a man who survives the horror. Suddenly both Tom's descent into an alcohol-fuelled depression and Desmond's anti-war stance make perfect sense.

The camerawork in the combat zones is superb. Gibson along with cinematographer Simon Duggan and editor John Gilbert keep the images rational, the cameras fluid, up close but only slightly jerky. The images of brutality, death, and heroism never compete with stunt directing and micro editing.

Andrew Garfield is serviceable and stays loyal to Desmond's admittedly dopey persona. Vince Vaughn finally demonstrates some acting chops outside of lame comedies, and enjoys a tremendous entry scene, Sergeant Howell invading the barracks of the new army recruits and exposing them to his brand of discipline and humiliation. Sam Worthington and Luke Bracey are the most prominent of the many fellow soldiers who endure the war with Desmond and witness or benefit from his exceptional audacity.

Hacksaw Ridge is an instant classic war film, a story of true love, religious conviction, dedicated service and remarkable bravery set amidst the worst form of perdition.

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