10BA cinema at its schlocky best - John Dixon showed he had a real feeling for the Australian myth with The Man from Snowy River and Anzacs I'm surprised he didn't do something historical-leaning for his directorial debut (dramatic feature debut that is).
Jon Blake and Mark Hembrow have easy chemistry as a couple of good old blokes but I think it was a mistake to have them as mechanics on the knock... It was a bit vague as to their characters... I think they should have been cops or flat out crooks. Probably cops. It would have made the action scenes make more sense - the bang bang is decently done but Blake and Hembrow seem awfully proficient with firearms.
The characters probably have too much in common too - in buddy comedies there's usually a difference between the lead blokes but both of them were knockabouts. They do seem to be friends though - I'm surprised they didn't share more scenes together, Blake goes off with Hembrow for great slabs of time.
I got sad watching Blake - handsome, a decent actor, he would have continued to be in much demand. Maybe not a Mel Gibson star - could Gibson have survived all the flops Blake appeared in? - but you can easily see him on a US cop show for ten years.
Hembrow has a lovely relaxed knock about presence - I'm surprised he disappeared. Nikki Coghill is fabulous - sweet, lovely, likeable. She was good in more bad Australian films than perhaps any other actor.
It's great that the love interest works for the crime authority but a mistake to have them meet of their own bat - it would've been better coming out of the story organically.
There's a lot of corruption in Australian society in this movie. Seriously everyone is corrupt - the cops, the rich, the unions.
The film smells of Melbourne - not just Melbourne locations but Melbourne actors (it's all very graduation of Crawfords) and praise of battlers, with characters called "Muppet" and "Spanner", and cops with porkpie hats and camp gays.
This is fun in it's late 80s obscure way. It's uneven as drama - it knows what beats it wants to hit and what it's kind of going for but doesn't get there. It's too confusing who the heroes are for me, key roles are miscast (Terry Donovan's part feels like it should be someone broadly comic), there's awful moments like Donovan visiting a brothel. It is a genuine period piece.
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