A film with much to admire – stunning locations, strong performances by a cast full of unfamiliar names (apparently they mostly came from Melbourne theatre), a genuine sense of authenticity (helped by having some of the characters speak in Gaelic, a terrific idea), it treats the story – one of Australia’s most amazing - with dignity, fidelity and respect. But it goes on too long, is repetitive and at the end of the day is about some fairly uninteresting people. They make two of the convicts gay but apart from that it’s hard to tell them apart – they’re all too, well, convict-ish, all beards, uniforms and accents. I know, I know, how else can do you do - the actors do good jobs, but I think the concept is too inherently trickly. (Normally you get a bit more variation among the characters in a shooting gallery movie, which at the end of the day this basically is.)
The script never surmounts the structural problems of the matter – one death, then another death, then another. There’s an effectrive sequence towards the end where one of the characters starts imagining his victims coming back – maybe the film needed more of this expressionism. Or more violence, and some variety in the deaths. Or just a shorter running time.
Bizarrely, this is the third film to come out in recent months which deals with the Pearce story, after Dying Breed and the Last Confession of Alexander Pearce. It's weird, especially considering the only other the airing the story really got was in For the Term of His Natural Life.
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