As a modern Western, a slight twist on the standard revenge flick and an old fashioned morality play, Red Hill is a nice little taste of Australian cinema goodness. Writer/director Patrick Hughes has penned an unsurprising but still involving story and backs it up with strong imagery of the vastness of nature and the cruelty of men. With a solid cast and just the right amount of violence to propel things along without overwhelming the narrative, this is a pretty entertaining flick. A sparsely drawn main character who seems more like a passive observer than a protagonist and probably underestimating how quickly most viewers will figure out its mystery are the only big flaws here but Red Hill avoids so many other of the standard pitfalls of this sort of thing that it feels refreshingly familiar instead of tiresomely repetitive.
Shane Cooper(Ryan Kwanten) is a young constable starting his first day on his new assignment in the small, country town of Red Hill. He's got a pregnant wife (Claire van der Boom) at home and a hard charging inspector named Old Bill (Steve Bisley) who makes it clear that this is his town and Cooper's a relatively unwelcome guest. Everything changes, however, when convicted murderer Jimmy Conway (Tom E. Lewis) breaks out of prison and Cooper finds Bill and a collection of townsmen in a near panic at his prospective return. Cooper is the first one to encounter Conway, barely escapes with his life and spends most of the film trailing behind Conway on his path of death, slowly unraveling the real secret of Red Hill. Oh, and there's a panther that shows up.
This motion picture is entirely about the conflict between Conway and the men of Red Hill. I would guess that Shane Cooper was injected into the script because of the supposed box office need for a young, attractive star but I don't think it was necessary. Ryan Kwanten does a good job on screen and there's a minor subplot with Shane and his wife but you could remove Shane, beef up the roles of Old Bill, Conway and the others and have a movie that was just as good, if not a little better. A bit better because without Shane, I suspect writer/director Hughes would have realized the mystery of Conway's revenge is too obvious and added a few more layers of subterfuge and misdirection to the plot. It does feel like Hughes came up with the story of Red Hill and only added in the "new guy in town" element later on to make it more commercially viable.
I don't think he had to do that because Steve Bisley is crackerjack and the character of Jimmy Conway is intriguing in his stoic muteness. Watching Conway plow through the rest of Old Bill's posse until the two of them finally meet would have been more than enough to pull in the audience and keep them watching. No one besides Shane, Bill and Conway get enough time and space on screen to show much personality, but the tiny bit of depth and definition Hughes gives of a couple of other constables (Kevin Harrington and Richard Sutherland) is interesting enough that I kind of wish Shane didn't occupy so much of Red Hill.
Hughes completely scores with is invocation of the wide open spaces of rural Australia. It gives an almost epic frame to this story of personal revenge, though Hughes doesn't appear to have a grasp on how slowly people actually move when they're on foot, particularly if they're seriously wounded. He does use distance to answer that age old question of this genre, namely "Why can't a bunch of guys manage to defend themselves against a single person?" The characters in Red Hill have so much ground to cover that splitting up into more easily killable numbers is perfectly logical, rather than stupidly cliché.
If Shane Cooper had been more deeply woven into or totally removed from the plot, this might have been a very good movie. As it is, Red Hill remains a clear cut or two above average and well worth seeing.
Shane Cooper(Ryan Kwanten) is a young constable starting his first day on his new assignment in the small, country town of Red Hill. He's got a pregnant wife (Claire van der Boom) at home and a hard charging inspector named Old Bill (Steve Bisley) who makes it clear that this is his town and Cooper's a relatively unwelcome guest. Everything changes, however, when convicted murderer Jimmy Conway (Tom E. Lewis) breaks out of prison and Cooper finds Bill and a collection of townsmen in a near panic at his prospective return. Cooper is the first one to encounter Conway, barely escapes with his life and spends most of the film trailing behind Conway on his path of death, slowly unraveling the real secret of Red Hill. Oh, and there's a panther that shows up.
This motion picture is entirely about the conflict between Conway and the men of Red Hill. I would guess that Shane Cooper was injected into the script because of the supposed box office need for a young, attractive star but I don't think it was necessary. Ryan Kwanten does a good job on screen and there's a minor subplot with Shane and his wife but you could remove Shane, beef up the roles of Old Bill, Conway and the others and have a movie that was just as good, if not a little better. A bit better because without Shane, I suspect writer/director Hughes would have realized the mystery of Conway's revenge is too obvious and added a few more layers of subterfuge and misdirection to the plot. It does feel like Hughes came up with the story of Red Hill and only added in the "new guy in town" element later on to make it more commercially viable.
I don't think he had to do that because Steve Bisley is crackerjack and the character of Jimmy Conway is intriguing in his stoic muteness. Watching Conway plow through the rest of Old Bill's posse until the two of them finally meet would have been more than enough to pull in the audience and keep them watching. No one besides Shane, Bill and Conway get enough time and space on screen to show much personality, but the tiny bit of depth and definition Hughes gives of a couple of other constables (Kevin Harrington and Richard Sutherland) is interesting enough that I kind of wish Shane didn't occupy so much of Red Hill.
Hughes completely scores with is invocation of the wide open spaces of rural Australia. It gives an almost epic frame to this story of personal revenge, though Hughes doesn't appear to have a grasp on how slowly people actually move when they're on foot, particularly if they're seriously wounded. He does use distance to answer that age old question of this genre, namely "Why can't a bunch of guys manage to defend themselves against a single person?" The characters in Red Hill have so much ground to cover that splitting up into more easily killable numbers is perfectly logical, rather than stupidly cliché.
If Shane Cooper had been more deeply woven into or totally removed from the plot, this might have been a very good movie. As it is, Red Hill remains a clear cut or two above average and well worth seeing.