This film gets points for actually having some aboriginal characters with a bit of guts - they are tough, don't take any crap, are smart and honourable and get to have a sex life... which differentiates them from many Australian films of the time, which depicted aboriginals as poor little victims. The film might have done better had it gone down more of a blaxploitation route, but it keeps hedging it's bets - you're never sure who the hero is. Is it tough John Stanton who feels the blacks are uncivilised but develops a grading respect for them? Is it Tommy Lewis, the aboriginal fighting for his land rights? Is it drunken Ivar Kants, who is supposed to have served in WW2, Malaya, Korea and Africa as a mercenary, and has an affair with Stanton's wife, Rebecca Gilling? Is it Gilling, who looks bored?
Indeed, I'm never sure exactly what sort of movie this is - a modern day Western? An adventure tale? An examination of land rights? There's a bit of everything, but not enough of anything. They could have gone trashy and exploitative - sex scenes, lots of action, nudity, etc. They could have gone thoughtful. What's here is okay, and reasonably entertaining - there is a decent amount of action - but it feels undercooked. For instance, Gilling's affair with Kants feels as though it comes out of nowhere and ends - and doesn't have much of a point to it.
This is set in the 1950s and feels like a movie made in that era. You could imagine it being shot by Rank starring Anthony Steel, or David Farrar, with it stories of settlers clashing with natives, and local police trying to keep the peace, and bored sexpot farmer's wife, and non aboriginal actress cast as an aboriginal. It feels like a mix of Dust in the Sun, Where No Vultures Fly, Nor the Moon by Night. It's a potboiler but lacks the real giddy pleasures of such films - at least as they were made in the 1980s. Still, it's not dull and there are some beautiful shots.
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