I caught this at the Sydney Film Festival and went in looking forward to seeing it as I'd only just read about it in the festival guide.
I found it to be quite tedious. Mainly because I didn't care about any of the characters (with the exception of Nathan Phillips who gave believable empathy with his performance). The lead actor (Khan Chittenden) had a difficult character but showed no emotion throughout the entire film, which in turn made it hard to feel anything for him. I don't know if the responsibility for that falls to him or the director, but if you're hanging a film of a central character like his it would help if we could read what's going on behind his eyes. From what I could understand his character was meant to be troubled, he gave no signs of this (other than the scripted obvious ones). He was a block of wood. With eyes. That didn't do anything.
The films setting is the western suburbs, however none of the actors (apart from Anthony Hayes) looked like they belonged there, which made it hard to accept their performances. It didn't help that they were photographed as if they were modeling a Mooks catalogue.
I left this film wanting to know why they made it. This kind of subject matter has been done before and done much better than this. I was hoping that it would add something new, either by experience or the point of the story. But it didn't.
** out of Ten.
I found it to be quite tedious. Mainly because I didn't care about any of the characters (with the exception of Nathan Phillips who gave believable empathy with his performance). The lead actor (Khan Chittenden) had a difficult character but showed no emotion throughout the entire film, which in turn made it hard to feel anything for him. I don't know if the responsibility for that falls to him or the director, but if you're hanging a film of a central character like his it would help if we could read what's going on behind his eyes. From what I could understand his character was meant to be troubled, he gave no signs of this (other than the scripted obvious ones). He was a block of wood. With eyes. That didn't do anything.
The films setting is the western suburbs, however none of the actors (apart from Anthony Hayes) looked like they belonged there, which made it hard to accept their performances. It didn't help that they were photographed as if they were modeling a Mooks catalogue.
I left this film wanting to know why they made it. This kind of subject matter has been done before and done much better than this. I was hoping that it would add something new, either by experience or the point of the story. But it didn't.
** out of Ten.