Red Hill (2010)

Shane Cooper (Ryan Kwanten) moves to the sleepy rural town of Red Hill with his pregnant wife Alice (Claire van der Boom). It's his first day as a local cop. His new boss Old Bill is dismissive of his new recruit for a previous incident where he failed to shoot. Jimmy Conway escapes from prison after murdering his wife and arrested by Old Bill. Shane stops a car with a scared elderly couple and then confronted by Jimmy Conway. Shane tries to surrender and falls off the cliff.This has a good gritty western feel. It revels in the brutal violent desolation tones. All of that is great. I have a big problem with one scene when Shane first confronts Jimmy Conway. The Mexican standoff is ridiculous. Shane surrendering to him is also pretty bad although it's playing into the character. This movie needs to start with a violent shootout and this scene is very disappointing. Shane can fall off the cliff as he runs away from Jimmy shooting at him. It's such a badly staged scene that it takes away some of the early intensity. It should have been an exciting action start. Otherwise, I love the style and tone of this movie.

Great cinematography, decent acting, but a really dumb script. A dumb story about a stupid cop who doesn't deserve to live. And the technical direction is pathetic. Cooper passes out from loss of blood (or was that fear) yet later he can carry a wounded cop for who knows how long?Everybody keeps racking their shotguns without dropping shells. That means there was nothing in the chamber. So why are they running around with empty chambers?Bill said Cooper had never shot a bullet? They don't train cops to use guns in Australia?Just when you're wondering if Cooper is ever going to bleed to death he suddenly has enough strength to lift heavy tables and ride a horse at high speed, then jump off said horse.Cooper breaks the window of a car where the door is clearly unlocked.His wife isn't the least bit interested in why he's covered in blood.Apparently rifle shots into the air create ricochets. Against what, I couldn't guess.Not one cop in the whole town can hit what he's aiming at, until the end, then not one of the cops' stray bullets even comes close to Cooper.Whoever said this was like No Country for Old Men must have been hallucinating. It was just bad bad bad script writing, from the very beginning to the end. But hey, it looked good.

Despite its setting in the modern Australian outback, Red Hill is essentially a Western. Ryan Kwanten plans Shane Cooper a young police constable (~ deputy) newly arrived to a small town from the big city with his pregnant wife. He comes up against the local inspector Old Bill (Steven Bisley), a Judge Roy Bean'ish law west of the Pecos, who barely conceals his disdain for someone he suspects is a coward. Cooper's first day on the job, the day over which the film is set, starts off badly and promptly gets worse. An escape from a maximum security prison sees the arrival of convicted murdered Jimmy Conway in town. This news of this escape strikes a chord with a number of the townspeople and sees Old Bill muster a search party, or posse by any other name, in the expectation of the arrival of Conway (chillingly played by Tommy Lewis in an almost wordless dead-eyed performance). Ryan Kwanten, in his first major lead role, is an amiably low-key hero. Although it becomes clear that Old Bill has underestimated his apparently callow young constable his capabilities are not unrealistically augmented and he doesn't suddenly become a combination of McGyver and Rambo when the chips are down. The real power in his performance is more effectively illustrated by the fact that the powerful performances of both Lewis and Bisley do not completely obliterate interest in his presence. Red Hill is among other things a genuinely beautiful film to behold with the shots of Victorian landscape breathtaking to behold and features an excellent score subtly helping to augment the Western atmosphere. As the first film from Patrick Hughes (who produced, directed, wrote, edited and presumably fed and watered the animals) it bodes well for the career to come.

SPOILERS SPOILERS First, I would like to say 2 things: - I really love revenge movies. I really do. They are one of my favourite plots in movies. -I am super lazy about writing reviews. I really am. This is my first review. Why am I writing it so? Because THE MOVIE IS JUST TERRIBLE, one of the worst I've ever seen. I wont criticize the plot, or the acting, or the soundtrack. They are kind of OK. But jeez, they are some scenes that are AWFUL. So if u hate movies where silly things happen and no one cares, just don't watch this film. The panther scene (I get the point of the director, but cOme on); the revenge guy being some kind of Mexican ninja (with boomerang included, impossible to kill, with superpowers (I guess one of them is to make the people around him retarded, because come on, why no one can shoot him properly?)... It is all stupidly unbelievable and childish. But, OVER ALL, what the hell is the scene with the main character cover full of blood, in his house, and the wife asking him "did u cut your face?" "No, its only a scratch". And the guy half, dead, pouring blood, like a zombie. COME ON!!!! I really thought that the wife was blind and I missed this point in the beginning of the movie. But not, she is not. I guess her husband comes every night cover with blood from job and it is alright. Whatever... REALLY, HORRIBLE MOVIE, Don't WASTE UR TIME, IT IS SHAMELESS