If he did this now could he have done that then? Melbourne-based federal agent specialising in corruption Aaron Falk (Eric Bana) goes back home to his drought-stricken outback hometown of Kiewarra to attend a tragic funeral. His best friend Luke Hadler (Martin Dingle-Wall) has shot his wife Karen and young son Billy dead and taken his own life. Luke’s parents Barb (Julia Blake) and Gerry (Bruce Spence) want Aaron to find out what could have possibly motivated their son to kill the family he loved – yet leaving his baby daughter alive in her cot. Was it money problems following the failure of the wheat crop due to the lack of rain? However, Aaron’s return reopens the door to the unsolved death of a teenage girl Ellie Deacon (BeBe Bettencourt) whom both he and Luke loved and young Aaron (Joe Klocek) and his father Erik (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor) were driven out when the boy was blamed for her drowning. Luke (Sam Corlett) approached Aaron and made him swear to say they were shooting rabbits at the time Ellie died, a story Aaron has stuck to throughout his life which gave them both an alibi. But his father believed he did it and now he’s dead. Gretchen Schoner (Genevieve O’Reilly) made up the foursome as teenagers and now she’s a single mother to young son Lachie and a good shot besides. Ellie’s demented father Mal Deacon (William Zappa) and cousin Grant Dow (Matt Nable) want Aaron out of town for the murder they say he committed twenty years ago. Aaron hangs around, initially for Barb and Gerry’s sake but then for himself as accusations are levelled at him about his complicity in Ellie’s death. Sergeant Greg Raco (Keir O’Donnell) begins to wonder at Aaron’s motivation for getting involved in finding the reason for the Hadler massacre because everyone suspects he and Luke lied about their whereabouts on the day of Ellie’s death. The locals campaign against Aaron’s presence, echoing the harassment twenty years earlier. Local farmer Jamie Sullivan (Jame Frecheville) has an alibi that doesn’t stack up for the time of the Hadler’s deaths now presumed to be the work of a third party. Then Karen’s work at the school accounts for principal Scott Whitlam (John Polson) might yield some answers when everything else fails … You just gotta keep going. You gotta keep going back. Adapted from Jane Harper’s smash hit 2016 novel, the flaws that exist here are due to the screenplay by Harry Cripps and director Robert Connolly. In the novel we were waiting for a Murder of Roger Ackroyd-type twist that would ironically have worked here due to the way Bana’s outsider character Aaron is constructed. The procedural details of the present-day investigation are sidelined in favour of dramatic recreations of Ellie’s friendship with Aaron, Luke and Gretchen twenty years ago leading to the girl’s demise. We were just four dumb kids. This works in the novel but the extensive flashbacks detract from the urgency of the criminal investigation and dilutes the tension which of course is posited on the presumption that another individual was involved, that Luke was a better man than the act of family destruction suggests, that people are hiding something. The secrets and lies of a small outback community suffering from no rain for almost a year is a setting ripe for metaphorical writing – just one match could light up like tinder and devastate a parched town that’s already drowning in hypocrisy and expedient blame. We’ve been waiting so long for rain. The subplots arise in order of supporting characters, with displaced blow-ins making the best of it for a while – Suburbia in the country – worst of both worlds, says the school principal – and the typical ensemble, nicely etched in this God-forsaken outpost but it feels a little incoherent in terms of the connections between people. The multi-racial casting of some wives may serve some kind of diversity quota but it introduces unnecessary and irrelevant questions about the story’s theme causing a diversion to a plot that is already dissipated from the unbalanced emphasis on the past. Superficially this narrative nods to Twin Peaks which also brings up the idea of two investigations in parallel by very different men who were surely the root of the relationship theme in the novel – Aaron and Raco – the veteran and the rookie teaming up, damaged cop and better cop. A much more problematic and guilty cop might have made this more cinematic: Aaron’s history as a suspect in Ellie’s death is not sufficient reason for his conduct in this iteration (the element of doubt of all kinds is largely internal in the book) and the fact that he’s an expert at financial cases doesn’t compromise his professionalism, it’s his origins that are the issue. Of course it’s precisely his expertise that helps solve the present-day crime. Bana simply doesn’t have enough to work with. Gretchen provides a kind of love interest for Aaron (but it’s hard to buy into) and she is potentially a femme fatale: O’Reilly is fine even if her accent slips a little. Your old man would be so bloody proud of you – he always knew the man you were. The villains are of the paternal variety but the detail of the novel is sacrificed for broad stroke action much of which being an Australian film has to take place in the bar. This whole thing was for my family. The doubts about the two deaths – their cause, their potentially wrongful identity as murders, at least with the wrong culprits, the introduction of different suspects, the psychological implications for Aaron – bring up memories of In Cold Blood but the context here is different, the violence of the family’s deaths downplayed and the past constantly rises up to ask questions about the moral turpitude of Aaron. Why are you still here? The great films about smalltown Australia (Wake In Fright) are about thwarted masculinity, inchoate rage and the erupting of sudden violence in an unforgiving sun-baked landscape. That is true of this, a great story that somehow stays too true to the source – altering the plot material and making Aaron a much more defective detective would have substantially improved the opportunity for Bana to give the great performance he deserves and Raco’s role is downplayed to the story’s detriment. And – unbelievably – the key line from Ellie’s diary, found close to the film’s climax, is left out of the voiceover. This is solid rather than gripping. Yet it’s atmospheric and well shot by Stefan Duscio, whose widescreen and aerial shots mark this out as a sensory experience, part of a bigger picture of loss and lies, devastation and death, juxtaposing the rich flowing river of the past with the dried-out desert bed the present has become in this wilted, shrivelled world. When you’ve been lying about something so long it becomes second nature
mondomovies 