Again we've flown a few American imports over to Oz, again to make something unexceptional. Shot mostly in the beautiful rugged and scenic Blue Mountains (a place I gotta see) the story is set in the week of 1983 leading up to Christmas, day by day. Adelaide'n I am, I remember that week well. Some nut, and it's pretty obvious who he is, is doing someone's dirty work, lighting fires, every Sunday in fact, ruining one enterprising architect/developer's (Skerrit) business, and grand plans for a new hotel, in the name of a big fee of compensation/insurance fraud by some big guns. On the whole, this film-thriller is messily structured, which I can see what could be confusing a lot of viewers. The story is quite good, and if given better insight, and a hell of a lot of better structure, we would of had a much better product. Skeritt is Skeritt, while Mason is very strong as an insurance investigator, from Llyods of London, a name I heard around the traps in my younger years. Pity the great Hughes, was killed off early in the film, while taking one too many swims in Manly, and she really likes to go far out, before lying flat across the water surface, and guess what happens from there. The psycho even confronts her momentarily, when she's sun baking prefore. Barrett as a bit of a shady fireman, is wasted. As in thrillers, especially like in The Bone Collector, we spent a little too much time with Barrett. It's a little trick in thrillers, called suspension of disbelief, making us think it's him, where it distracts us from the real killer, which this is done early in the film. But I'll never forget the scene with the little daughter of the big gun, Julian Kane, Skeritt's boss, wearing that big dolls hat, while eating up her ice cream, and the younger sleazy dude rocks up. Another unintentional funny scene in Aussie cinema. In my opinion it's the best scene of the film, yet the climax was explosive one could say. But like I said, the movie's a mess and doesn't spend too much time in one place. The thing I love about A Dangerous Summer though, as you feel the searing heat and sweat where tempers boil, much like Heatwave, and Summer fan that I am, this counts for something.
