Warwick Thornton directs Hamilton Morris, Sam Neill and Bryan Brown in this Australian ‘western’ where an aboriginal man and his wife go on the run in the outback after defending themselves against a murderous white settler.

This is a bit too brutal, a bit too preachy and a bit too self determined as tragic to enjoy as a genre experience. Which is frustrating as the best moments are the more traditional gunplay, tracking and kangaroo courtroom sequences. The meat and potatoes you’d expect from a revisionist western essentially. When it overstretches for prestige’s sake, it bores. The unsubtly of the metaphors chipping away at the natural performances and stunning location work. There is a nice fractured temporality to the editing; we often glimpse characters’ eventual fates when we first meet them. And once we get deep into the desert the imagery has a fantasy inspiring delirium that stays with you. Shame it is so often violently overwrought, as all enjoyability is sapped from it due to this.

6