Film Reviews

Red Hill

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Ryan Kwanten
• Details: Australia / 95mins (TBC).

A contemporary Western in the style of No Country For Old Men, writer-director Patrick Hughes might not possess the honed skills of the brothers Coen, but for a debut film with a minimal budget Red Hill is full of promise.
Constable Shane Cooper (Kwanten) moves from the big city to the small Outback town of Red Hill with his pregnant wife (van der Boom). Shane's first day isn't one he'll forget: an explosion at a prison allows dangerous criminal Jimmy Conway (Lewis) to escape and rumours abound that he's heading for Red Hill for revenge. But revenge for what? The police in the station are being tight-lipped and the residents are more concerned with tooling up than divulging information. The town goes into lockdown and waits for Jimmy, and hell, to show up…
Red Hill is a movie that takes you off guard. The fish-out-of-water opening likens itself to the odd-beat humour of early nineties TV series Northern Exposure with the city boy finding it difficult to adjust to the snail's pace of country life and the eccentric characters that inhabit the town. It then hints at a horror - 'something' in the surrounding hills has spooked the livestock and a cow lies dead on the mountainside with a sizeable bite taken out of its hide. Once Jimmy appears and dumps his stolen vehicle for a horse and dons a hat, Red Hill turns into a Western. In this Western, the hero, Shane, is 'yella': he transferred from the big city because he failed to fire on a teenager who pulled a gun on him.
Jimmy, the hideously scarred Aborigine on a mission to wipe the entire town out, is a memorable villain. With a bullet belt strapped across his chest, his silent killer is lethal, an indestructible Terminator. HBO's True Blood Kwanten delivers in his first lead role and Steve Bisley, Red Hill's tough, grizzled old cop, takes control every time he's on screen.
You've seen all this before, however. Patrick Hughes fails to bring anything new to the table with some scenes lifted from other movies. It's tone is a little wonky with Hughes veering from full on seriousness to tongue-in-cheek humour (Jimmy plays Stevie Wright's Black Eyed Bruiser on a jukebox before blowing someone away) without gelling the two. There are many inexplicable moments too - far too often Jimmy is in sight and no one shoots.
Red Hill, though, is an enjoyable, solid thriller.

Review by Gavin Burke