Review of The Proposition (2005) by Brutus — 15 May 2006

Wildly overpraised movie, especially in the English and Australian press. Lots of violence, lots of ham-fisted allegory, lots of banal "insight" into Australian race relations, and copious amounts of fringe of pain overacting.

For all these flaws, the film nevertheless brings the extraordinary landscape of western Queensland to life, and captures the severity and harshness of the Australian outback and its chequered history.

Deserves some credit for reminding us all that racism, madness and bloodthirsty excess are not the exclusive preserve of the American West. Amongst the violent protagonists, Guy Pearce and David Gulpilil take out the acting honours, simply by being halfway restrained while everyone else in sight whips themselves into a frenzy of biblical wrath, moral ambiguity and eye-rolling depravity.

John Hurt has a bit of fun as a drunken bounty hunter, Ray Winstone and Emily Watson attempt to counterpoint the malevolence with some "civilised and repressed" posturing, but to no great effect really.

David Wenham is effectively slimy as a local bureaucrat of sorts, who orders the fatal whipping of the (obligatory) halfwit. The whole thing ends rather anticlimatically after an excruciatingly brutal Xmas dinner, with dysfunctional brothers Guy and Danny wandering off across the sunblasted landscape to die together, while simultaneously speculating on the unhappy nature of families.

Almost as cringe inducing as the "Knocking on Heaven's Door" sequence in "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid", in fact - a movie that this movie is far too close to. So, this is principally a movie for people that think Sam Peckinpah was some kind of visionary, and who think biblical symbolism is really , like "powerful" - and not simply an outdated artistic device.

Much more boring than you might think from the reviews.