According to the Screen Australia web site, some 45 Australian features were made in 2008, up from 25 in 2007. This movie is probably one of the better ones along with Sampson, My Year Without Sex, Disgrace, Mary and Max and The Black Balloon. It is an adaptation of a well-received first novel by Denise Young by a first-time feature director Glendyn Ivin, the sort of creative combination so beloved of our film funding bodies – "Here's $3 million, go away and play dears". In this case the result isn't so bad and the film does add something to the novel's story of a petty criminal's last sojourn with his 10 year old son across the Australian countryside, with the forces of law and order in hot pursuit. The novel set the action in outback New South Wales but the film makers removed the setting to the more spectacular wildernesses of northern South Australia for both artistic and financial reasons. The reason for Kev and his son Chook's flight, apparent at the start of the novel, is revealed only by degrees, which does add to the drama.
As others have noted, the father Kev, played with all lugubrious stops out by the lugubrious Hugo Weaving, is not a very likable character. Not only does he have serious anger management issues, he is pretty selfish and stupid – the sort of criminal one finds in prison rather than out of it. Having had a pretty sad upbringing himself he does try to do better as a father, but it is not easy for him, and it is not surprising his son becomes disillusioned. His son, despite all the fatherly incompetence, seems surprisingly normal – perhaps this is the result of an uncannily naturalistic piece of acting by Tom Russell, a child actor who is so good he doesn't seem to be acting. What does come across is that even bad fathers can teach good lessons, and that in the end we have to become our own person.
Greig Fraser's cinema photography featuring the Flinders ranges, Wilpena Pound and Lake Gairdner gives a majestic backdrop to what is a fairly small story – I thought it a bit like "And When Did You last See Your Father" would have been if it had been set in the Swiss Alps. Unlike that film, this one has a less angry tone. Poor old Kev can't really help being so inadequate, and he at least makes an effort for his son.
This was an interesting and watchable piece, but I can't see it doing well. Like a lot of similar realistic movies it deals with people at the margins of society, and frankly, most people aren't interested (escapist is a different story). I just wish the government film bodies would stop throwing money at first-timers to make stuff so alien to most people's experiences and of so limited relevance to whatever main steam Australian culture is. One the other hand, The Black Balloon and My Year Without Sex did deal with topics relevant to us all. Bring back David Williamson, I say.
