Much mocked in its day and little remembered by history but this isn't bad. I actually enjoyed this a fair bit in part because it was so unpretentious but also because it had a decent story.
Many commentators - myself included - have poo-pooed this as simply an American Western shot in Australia which says little about Australia. I mean that is mostly true but it makes some attempt to wrap its head around Australia - the produced, T McCreadie was Australian and it was based on a story by Aussie Tony Scott Veitch.
It's well constructed for US audiences - it's about a Pinkerton agent (basically - called Remington here) played by Jock Mahoney sent to Australia to find a murderer. I will admit there's a lot of Americans in an Australian town - a miner played by Alan Gifford, his daughter player by Martha Hyer (later Mrs Hal Wallis), a barmaid played by Veda Ann Borg, Douglas Dumbrille as another businessman. The baddy is either Gifford or Dumbrille and while we figure out it's Dumbrille very quickly there's lots of solid conflict: Hyer loves local cop Guy Doleman, Gifford was a crook, Doleman suspects Mahoney of the crimes and arrests him.
Some annoying bits like why doesn't Mahoney tell Doleman he's an agent at the top instead of waiting til the end? Doleman could think he's a liar to keep that conflict going. They could have done more with Hyer thinking that Mahoney killed her father and more with the Borg-Mahoney romance; it feels perfunctory when they could have given it more juice... had her say be an ex of one of Dumbrille's off siders say (played by Grant Taylor and Frank Ransome).
But there is some lovely scenery - not of the outback interestingly but more of that Blue Mountains region; an aboriginal tracker who throws a boomerang; a pet koala; a script that emphasizes differences between the countries (Doleman points out to Mahoney you don't carry guns around); good tension between Doleman and Mahoney (Doleman is the secondary hero); solid comic relief from Alec Kellaway (it's more tiresome the woman who wants to marry him... this was a trope at the time, it's in Squatter's Daughter, and just makes him seem gay).
I would've liked more action but what is there is solid - a barroom brawl between Mahoney and Taylor/Ransome (seems that no doubles were used), the final chase and shoot out on a coach. The competence of the script sets it apart from most Australian films even now.
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