An Aussie Western with some good action and an impressive look but full of silly errors: a town meeting before breakfast, the head of the local police being allowed to speak on political matters, is there so much money to be made out of a railway line that people would kill? You can guess by the fact the escaped killer is aboriginal that he’ll turn out to be not that made – sure enough the true villain is the mean, anti-green cop who shouted down the idea of having a food and wine festival in the town. (This has sort of got the same take on rural people as found in Hannie Rayson’s Inheritance with some season four McLeods Daughters plotting thrown in i.e. the Grampians puma).
Ryan Kwanten is the nominal hero, a bumbling cop who is forever getting knocked out or shot, is unable to pull a trigger, falls over, takes forever to figure out what’s going on, has a pregnant wife who you keep waiting to pay off but never goes. He’s more of an observer to the action. The real hero/protagonist is Tommy Lewis – a tough, scarred badass straight out of a western, a superhero with his dead eye aim and mighty vengeance. (His skills didn’t seem to extend to telling his lawyer what happened). It really just should have been his story from the get go.
The photography and locations are excellent, the acting solid, there is some decent acting. It’s flaws could have been easily fixed but I think they were in too much of a hurry to get the thing made.
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