Review of The Rover (2014) by Tarek F — 22 Jun 2014

"The Rover" Review:

I came across the movie, "The Rover" this weekend. Directed by David Michod, this film centers on an economic collapse and one man goes on a crazy killing spree just to get his stolen car back. It stars Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson. At first when I saw this film advertised like three months ago, I thought that lots of girls would find it captivating since it stars "Twilight" actor. When I saw the movie though it was just five other people, my friend, and I. This film is not a big money making film obviously.

The film takes place ten years after an economic collapse in Australia. A hardened loner, Eric (Pearce) is after thieves who took his only one possession and that is his car. As he continues his ruthless journey to find the thieves, he captures a man name Rey (Robert Pattinson): One of the thieves' brother. The journey is a duo form for a complicated bond on a harsh journey.

The dialogue was very minimal in this film, which I enjoyed parts of the time, but after a while it was causing me to doze off in certain moments of the film. In addition, the scoring of the film was accurate to the haunting scenarios going on. Furthermore, the violence in was just pure gory: not throughout, but just unexpectedly. Another issue was the concept of the violence being un-defined, primarily the opening where everyone is panicking and viewers do not know why people are getting injured horridly.

"The Rover" was also a huge drag. The opening is attention grabbing, but gets repetitive. Earlier in the film, Pearce asks like four times where his car is to different people. His quote being, "I am looking for my car...it has got three people in it," you know that he will say that again given how repetitive it is. Whoever makes a small attempt to help him, he does not have patience, his character just kills them once he gets what he wants. First off, there was not much evidence for it to start out that violent, and it was overdone where I just realized that "The Rover" is another overrated apocalyptic-world film.

Joel Edgerton did the writing for this film. I will say a suspenseful premise, but did not really understand "The Rover." Maybe Edgerton is doing other jobs in the film industry and decided he will write a script. He probably has some potential for a script that could be an amazing film, but for now he is probably better off being a brilliant actor as he is.

Overall, "The Rover" is one of the films that I would not consider the best independent feature around. In my opinion, it was rushed. Great cinematography, great actors, but tons of un-answered questions, and not descriptive of why everything is such a disaster in the setting of "The Rover." I do not think I will watch it for a second time. I do give it some credit for trying though.