"Sweet As" is a thinly-disguised tourism advertisement, that reminds the serious traveller not to waste time on the cities but to get out to where you'll be sure, but only just, that you can find your way back to the road.
The main character is Western Australia. That's where you can lose your trivial self. But don't get lost for real, because roads are only few and they're quite far between. It's all millions of years old; and tens of thousands of years of habitation by the ABCs (the Australians Before Cook) did about as much damage to the environment as a couple of hours of ferocious activity by extractive industries in our unapologetic capitalism.
Some young people, who are learning about photography, have been inserted, as a flimsy excuse for taking pictures of this Main Character. I can't remember what happens in their story - the cop is a good guy, and the rough elements are suitably rough. Some of the young people are supposed to be dysfunctional. No-one gets killed, and no-one gets pregnant - or not that I noticed.
Civilisation, in this portrayal of WA, consists mainly of big silos and big stacks of minerals waiting to be loaded onto ships - the cinematographer does good work here, contrasting this coastal fringe of frenetic activity with the Big Land, which looks on silently and is not much impressed by what it sees.
Shantae Barnes-Cowan, as well as being easy on the eye, can do that actor's thing: replace half a page of dialogue with a "look" - and if that half-page was going to be mainly cliche, that look will do just fine. As Murra, she adds nifty titles to nifty snap-shots. To Murra, this is her land; to the average Australian it's just real estate and marketable resources.
So the land cries out: See me, don't sell me; feel my pulse, don't flog me off. Viewers of this movie might find themselves wishing that the humans on the screen would hurry up and finish whatever it is they're doing, so that the camera can get back to connecting this heartland to our hearts.
