Wounded Land

You know the cliche where the distraught woman or child feebly punches at the big guy before falling into his embrace? That's the one thing wrong with this movie. I just wanted to get that complaint off my chest. Otherwise, the script is admirably creative. There's more incident and characterization than is necessary just to compel the main plot, and the main plot turns out not even to be what we might originally think it is. The actors are believable and help nourish the script's apparent message that our arguments are not with purely and obviously malevolent people but with fellow citizens of a wounded land. The same writing/directing team made a similar point in their next film, Homeport, which is about the world of the dock workers. In that microcosm, the script makes it a little easier to point at the flaws in the system; in Wounded Land it's harder.