Sunday, June 04, 2006

Movie Review: "The Proposition"

Within the first five violent minutes the terms of the proposition are clear and in motion. Not unlike Captain Willard in "Apocalypse Now", Guy Pearce sets out into an Australian Heart of Darkness (more brutal than any river in Africa or Asia) to terminate a former compatriot who has gone insane.

I'm a big fan of Nick Cave's music and his screenplay has many of his recognizable characters and themes - madmen, drunkards and violence of Biblical proportions.

There's also a vain, George Bush-like popinjay who is quite out of his depth as a leader and completely unable to control the violence he has foolishly put into motion. I like to think the resemblance was intentional.

The actors are great but they are almost overshadowed by several of the extremely weathered extras who seemed to have spent their entire lives in blast furnace of the Australian outback.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great movie! It's sort of hard to recommend, though, in that it IS so gritty -- and gory. I don't feel it was unwarrented, though; Cave just didn't pull any punches when demonstrating how violent the times were.

AArtVark said...

"popinjay" - one would have to dig deep to find modern usage... Congratulations!

Scott Roeben said...

A movie review. Yay! Man, the things a person will resort to when they their camera is on the blink.