Gettin' Square

David Wenham steals the show as the spaced out junkie "Spit". His performance in the tribunal scene is one of the greatest comedy scenes I've ever seen in a movie. This performance took it from just another caper movie to a really good movie. Freya Stafford was wasted as the juvenile love interest, she can handle meatier roles than this. Gary Sweet as good as ever and the rest of the cast was world class. Don't miss this one!

I've now watched this movie twice and enjoyed it immensely on both viewings. It has an excellent script with great humour and is very hilarious in parts... particularly when David Wenham's character "Johnny Spitieri" is on the screen. David should have won an Oscar along with his AFI, FCCA & IF Best Actor awards for this role. Absolutely excellent! The rest of the cast also give very good performances and are well cast. Timothy Spall is particularly good as the crim who's trying hard to be a legitimate businessman. It's a good tale with enough twists and turns to hold your interest to the very end. Watch it for David's performance if nothing else!

This was a decent Aussie comedy-crime caper. Granted it takes a bit to get going but is worth watch for a young Sam Worthington and a knock out performance from David Wenham as 'Spit' the lovable, mullet spouting drug addict. Friends in prison, both men are paroled around the same time and determined to put the past behind them and stay straight.

Spit struggles with heroin, noisy flip-flops and a lack of pants while 'Barry' gets a job at the Texas Rose, a restaurant owned by another ex-con trying to go straight as a family man and lose some unwanted pounds -played by the excellent Timothy Spall.

All three men are being targeted by a local crime boss, a shifty accountant and a corrupt detective and get pulled into that one last heist. There's a bit of a love story between Worthington and his parole officer, lots of twists, some good laughs (mostly during the courtroom scene) and a fantastic soundtrack. 10/19/16

'Gettin' Square' is one of my favourite movies of the last few years. It's copped a fair bit of flak from critics, but in my opinion it's one of the best Australian films going around today.

The Australian film industry unfortunately doesn't have the support of local audiences that it deserves, on top of this, Australian humour doesn't seem to be very funny at all to overseas audiences and 'Gettin' Square' will undoubtedly suffer the same fate as superb Aussie films like 'Swimming Upstream'.

In an era of Americanisation in the Aussie film industry (see 'Blurred' and the soon to come 'Deck Dogz') 'Gettin Square' has strong Aussie flavour with biting humour and a smart storyline. David Wenham's performance as 'Spit' was hilarious, as was Timothy Spall's performance as Darren Barrington. While Spall and Wenham provide the humour, Sam Worthington, David Field and Gary Sweet provide the stinging taste of Australia's underworld, rehabilitation system and police corruption.

As a whole, 'Gettin' Square' is an excellent film, superbly directed by Johnathon Teplitzky that mixes comedy, drama and crime/thriller flawlessly.

See this for: David Wenham's Johnny Spit, the Weight Watcher's jokes, the soundtrack, the clever plot, the twist at the end.

If you don't like the film, I would venture to say that you have missed the point of trying to capture the Oz psyche. This flick did, and I loved it.

From the choice of Nick Cave singing whilst Barry resigns himself to a corrupt flogging, to Spit's thongs (flip flops for out-of-towners) and acid wash jeans, this film is one of those "essence" films. When done well, capturing the essence of Australia, that is rapidly fading into history (and we can all identify or know many of the characters) just makes you laugh.

The treat is how an good tale has been woven around the lead characters, ususally its the opposite. In particular, I am totally amazed how Mr Wenham, like he did in Cosi (my favourite Oz movie), manifests a character so utterly different from the man himself. He truly is the business when it comes to his craft.