Donald Crombie's third feature has a good, solid story, even if without movie stars it was probably better suited to being a telemovie. That's no criticism of Michelle Fawdon and Alan Cassell, both of whom are very good - Fawdon's Maltese accent sounded believable to me, and Cassell has a great tough presence, spitting out dialogue. And I can't think of what stars could have played the role as well. Maybe Rod Taylor in the Cassell part. A post-Newsfront Bill Hunter? Gerard Kennedy? Jack Thompson was too young.
The film is mostly from the POV of Cassell - so they don't dramatise scenes that would've been exciting like seeing Fawdon clash with her husband, and finding her child going missing. There's a lot of reportage. There may have been budget/legal reasons for this but it means Fawdon doesn't get the automatic sympathy she would have otherwise and the journey isn't as compelling.
There's a lot of reportage and backstory. A lot of smoking too. Heaps of two and three handers where people talk.
I like that Cassell's real life character was actually interesting - a boozy journo. They had to pull back on that and the fact he slept with Cathy. And presumably legal reasons why we can't see the husband.
Support cast full of familiar faces - Bryan Brown, Lex Marinos, Robert Hughes, Arthur Dignam, Grant Dodwell, Frankie J Holden.
It has the pace of a decent procedural.But far too many Q and A scenes. It doesn't really dramatise the story. Great piece of material but they were hampered by being unable to show too much true story.
No comments:
Post a Comment