The Flood - Melodie der Rache

I've never done this before, but as we know there's a first time for everything. At time of writing this review, The Flood, according to IMDB has a rating of 4.5, which I can completely understand, though I personally think it's a little high. Bear with me here. There are 47 user reviews, about 40 of which have scores of 9 or 10. Make sense statistically? No, I don't think so either. I've always been a sceptic, but maybe there is some truth to that IMDB urban legend about cast and crew of these sort of C grade movies, all collectively contributing powder puff reviews complete with outstanding numerical ratings in a crass effort to increase their film's audience.

Because Victoria Wharfe McIntyre's film, while visually magnificent, is the cinema equivalent of a rather rancid piece of mutton dressed up as succulent lamb. I weep for the contributors on this forum who actually believe this trippy little wannabe Tarantino downunder piece, has some sort of historical pretensions. No the Australian government wasn't in any conspiracy with Catholic missions to provide indigenous slave labour on farms and stations, as the film alleges in its opening scrolled notes. And no, post World War 2 rural Australian townspeople didn't engage in wholesale rapings and killings of indigenous people at the drop of a slouch hat. The town posse sequence for instance! I mean the film even confuses itself over this. First it states that there was this officially - sanctioned slave labour process, but then suggests that the beneficiaries of the said labour, just shot them up, whenever the yen took them.

And then we come to the technical aspects of The Flood. The acting is just plain ordinary. The characterisations almost uniformly cardboard, especially those of the villainous whites. About the only stereotypical image we weren't dished up, was some guy with a waxed moustache tying an Aboriginal girl in a white dress to a set of railway tracks. We got just about everything else including an incredibly intrusive and anachronistic soundtrack, choppy editing and repetition of certain scenes, dream sequences which only added to the main narrative's overall incoherence and John Woo style slow motion action scenes which added nothing to the sequences, apart from reminding us continually that McIntyre loves to ape and pay homage to far better directors. She even bizarrely finds the time in this overlong film to throw in a flashback/dream Mad Max reference. Make of it what you will.

I have no issue with writer/directors such as McIntyre wanting to make films about the injustices that First Nations people have suffered. But let's try and start with a semi - realistic storyline, such as that offered by The (far better) Nightingale. The Flood is a contradictory jumble of themes, ideas and characters that undermines any valuable points that McIntyre was possibly trying to make about colonialism and racial hatred. Best avoided.

Good movie , Great dedication to the stolen children from the aboriginal community , To understand this film you need to understand the aboriginal culture . Don't go by FilmMcCool reviews him/her doesn't give many good reviews , You need to see for yourself to understand the film

We wish the producers had not embellished the story - a very important story of awful racial discrimination and persecution - with a seemingly endless mash-mash of dreams and fantasies switching back and forth with "reality" so that it became totally confusing. The gun battles were somewhat ridiculous and while it was good to see the persecutors being killed off, it then became confusing as to whether or not that had happened.

They missed a great opportunity to more correctly portray the dreadful injustices experienced by our Indigenous population in the mid 20th century.

Perhaps some other producer may eventually take the same story line and make it far more accurately show the experiences at that particular period.

A good story and acting although a bit fragmented in some places. Definately worth a watch

This could have been so much better. The story was quite good, but could have been told in half the time. The rest of the movie was padded out with pointless fantasy/dream sequences which added nothing at all to the story. It was also interspersed with random pop-type songs, totally out of keeping with the on-screen action or the time period setting. The action scenes and violence were over-the-top and unbelievable to the point where I thought the Director was trying to be Australia's answer to Tarantino!