The Flood

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.

Granted, I only glanced at the movie's cover before sitting down to watching it, so I didn't really know what I was in for, as I hadn't heard about the movie prior to watching it, nor did I read the synopsis. I thought it to be a Western of sorts.

Turns out that this wasn't a Western at all. Instead I was sitting down to watch an Australian historical drama. And now I am not overly traversed within the Australian history, so this was all new territory for me. And from what the movie delivered to me in terms of entertainment and enjoyment value, I suppose you have to have been more familiar with the events of Australian history and culture to appreciate the movie fully.

Sure, "The Flood" was watchable, but it was hardly a captivating or overly impressive movie for me. Again, perhaps because I am not familiar with the Australian history. So I can't relate to the events in the movie's storyline, nor did I stand any chance of knowing what to be true or based on true events, and what was fictional make-belief.

The acting in the movie was good, although I felt that the storyline and the slow pacing of the movie was somehow holding back the performers in delivering everything that they could and should.

My rating of "The Flood" settles on a generous four out of ten stars. This movie wasn't really aimed at me as its target audience, and I wasn't really getting swept away, nor could I fully sink myself into the storyline and the events that transpired in the story. But I am sure that writer and director Victoria Wharfe McIntyre managed to dish out a movie that will have a greater appeal to people Down Under.

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

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.

There was a story worth telling in this, but it got lost in confusion and cliche's.