Loveland

This movie is not really worth spending time to review but I will in a few brief words anyway. The pace is terrible. The plot and scenes are completely disjointed. You are left trying to figure out what the hell is happening for close to 3/4 of the movie. Half the movie has voice-over from the characters that means nothing because you don't know what's going on to begin with. The story itself what actually interesting and could have been something with different direction and editing.

I was looking forward to this film as I very much enjoyed Mystery Road and Goldstone. (It seems it has been released as Expired rather than the current 'Loveland' title here on imdb.)

As a sci-fi film it is clearly somewhat hamstrung by a lack of budget. You get a couple of distant shots of a futuristic city but then all the filming of the cast are just on the street, 'today'. Nobody dresses any different, the cars and streets are all unchanged, its slighlty jarring. There are a lot of people walking around with umbrellas up, even though its not raining. I can only guess the plan was to cgi some of these sequences but maybe the money ran out.

That aside when it starts it is really difficult to hear the lead actor. He speaks so quietly and is way down in the mix so that you can't hear what he is saying about half of the time. Most of the (long) opening narration is inaudible and throughout the film it's often a struggle to make out his dialogue. Its somewhat ironic all the Chinese cast, who speak clearly, are subtitled where it is the lead who really needs it.

Its a very slow film and there really isn't much in the way of story. There is no chemistry at all between the two leads either so it was ultimately not very interesting. I made it to the end hoping there would be something more but then it ended.

It seems to want to be a kind of mash-up between Paris, Texas and Blade Runner but its like thats as far as the idea went.

This film tries to be deep and meaningful with a distinct Blade Runner skyline interspersed with real, busy street scenes. It just fails to ignite, the story isn't clear, Weaving is under used and the male lead has to be the most scruffy, miserable SOB i've ever come across.

His mumbling frustrates as do the extended scenes where nothing happens, without even minimal (poor) dialogue to break it up.

The girl has the sort of face that'll get work and , no doubt she can act.

Hugo was doing his bit for Oz, that's fair enough, the other two leads need to dust themselves off and try again.

I rarely write review for films but, as an Australian filmmaker, I had to. Someone has to be honest and call it out when one of our Australian films, for a lack of better word, sucks.

In summary, it was bad. It gave nothing for the audience to hang onto, maybe except for some mediocre low budget VFX visuals. So with the slow pace and nothing to go for, it was excruciating to sit through the film keeping an open mind that it might get better, which it didn't. I was cringing as they whisper talked to each-other through the whole film, as if that would give their dialogue more depth. But there was not depth in the content of the dialogue.

While in Australia it is celebrated as another great work of Ivan Sen (actually he is a very good filmmaker), there are many flaws that should have been seen even in the screenplay, especially by those who gave the funding and support to the film. The biggest flaw was; why would the audience care for Jack? He is loser, not relatable, and he kills random people for a living, and he's not very good at it either. I could care less if he died from his condition (whatever his condition was).

I could go on and on, but I want to wrap it up with one question; 'Why does this movie need to exist?'. And the answer is it doesn't.

With all that negative, I know the director is fund of sci-fi genre, so I hope this was a great practice so his next sci-fi film will not suffer the same flaws.

The pacing is excruciatingly slow. The movie has very little dialog, plot or action. Kwanten talks in a half whisper both in his voice-over and dialog. It's really quite a boring movie. It shares a lot of characteristics with Lost in Translation.

My verdict - pass

If you decide to watch it and you happen to play it on VLC video player on Windows then run it at 108% speed.