The making of this film was extremely difficult, with anxious politicians and businessmen making vague threats, difficulties almost getting Julie Christie to play the lead (they couldn't come up with the cash in the end), sacking Bill Hunter for John Hargreaves.
Maybe this led to all the excitement being drained out of it. Or maybe the filmmakers weren't up to it.
Some effective moments - like the solitary house along the streets. It's a throwback to the time of green bans, militant unions, unionists who were communists, developers were more violently criminal, pubs reeked of smoke, the Sydney inner city hadn't gentrified.
Elizabeth Alexander does well in the lead and there's some fine acting from Hargreaves, Alexander Archdale, Reg Evans and so on... plus the novelty of seeing Tony Martin in an early role.
But it's flat. For a film based on a true story there's an awful lot of cliches -villains popping up out of the back seat of cars, heroes going to the media to Tell All, people singing protest chants in the pub (on the march I can understand but in a pub?), evil businessmen literally chuckling evilly in a boardroom and playing golf, groovy tenants, the heroine dangled off a building ledge.
There's not a lot of nuance - the communist unionist is heroic and martyred - a bit ruthless and indifferent to Alexander's suffering but even then he's doing it In a Good Cause. The brother and his wife look as though they're going to add complexity but, no, the wife is all for the struggle and the brother just misses out on a job opportunity.
The drama is underwhelming - at the end we don't see Alexander go for it. She keeps changing her mind about what she's going to do... then talks... but we don't see what she's going to say. It's implied she's going to tell the truth but we just hear the intro, she could be then about to lie... The green ban kicks in, but there's no fall out. It's ambiguous and while the filmmakers might argue this was intentional I get the feeling it was more incompetence because at the end you feel... what? Corruption goes on? But a unionist has been killed. I mean, that's going to cause some noise isn't it? If she made these allegations... surely there'd be some fall out. If not... then there would be fall out too.
It's frustrating. I think they got so exhausted by the production process they didn't bring their A game.
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