Lucky Miles (2007)

Well, i don't really join the Hoo Haas on this one, I did have some good laughs but nearly yawn at others. I liked the music, I like the scenery, I liked the acting. But i'm not so sure about the whole mix, There were impossible situation and unrealistic too. One may find difficult to accept such fun in such desperate situations, the English a little too perfect for my liking and my migrant background. I was a little puzzled by the landscape and thought to cancel my hopes to go to Egypt one day on this basis, but after reading a comment about that landscape having perhaps being borrowed from somewhere else, I might wait to find the reality. I have traveled in Nth Qld, and from Darwin to Melbourne and saw a desert quite different. But I have never been to Nth WA so can't really tell one way or another. Warts and all I found it a very worthwhile work, but for me I found better value in some other Aussie movies. To each its own, but you have to see it if you want to know :)

LOVED the film ..the story line the cinematography....there were so many wonderful moments...loved how the Arun 'pan' like figure searched for his Father in spite of the odds...loved how the ute and the old shed scene ...felt the raw human emotion when Arun was in the headlights of the car driven by Gerard K...it was fate and luck as to whether the driver would be friend or foe...so well done! Loved how S.A. was made to look like W.A....and how the mean pirate seemed to be sending the message that "He who is without sentiment or conscience will prevail"...but did his karma-drama get him?..watch the film and find out! Loved Lillian Crombies brief appearance and how the army-tracker really captured the skill and simplicity of the Black-fellas perception of things...especially when they were all running left right and centre and he observed their histrionics. Thought it was funny when the Sargeant was showing his tracker skills by reading the obvious..... Really liked how the vulnerability of dispossession was portrayed and how Yousiff kept on going in spite of having lost his wife and brother and job and belongings...and how he looked after the others in spite of his anguish and frustration. And its true..bars in Asia are full of funny smelling Ozzies and the kind of humour you captured in the film. One of my favourite scenes was when someone said "He has a gun" and the camera panned right back to a synchronised retreat of all in the shot...well done! An AFI for this one I reckon!

The scenario is simple. A disparate group of refugees are dumped on the inhospitable West Australian coast by unscrupulous people smugglers. It may sound like the perfect recipe for a tale of woe and misery, but instead Lucky Miles is a comedy, and easily the most enjoyable Australian film I've seen for quite a few years. And the audience at the Sydney Film Festival certainly found plenty to laugh at. Writer Helen Barnes and writer/director Michael James Rowland, aided by a wonderful ensemble cast, have created a marvelous set of characters. They could have given us mere symbols of suffering and injustice, or ethnic stereotypes, but instead each character is gloriously human. The Iraqi and Cambodian refugees, the Indonesian people smugglers, and the Australian reservists tasked with rounding them up, all have laughable foibles. And it is the presentation of this common humanity that makes this film not only very funny, but also a powerful exploration of one of the most pressing issues of our time.

It was refreshingly funny, simply told, and yet really meant something. I went in to this film with my friends specifically because we wanted to see something Australian and fit around our work schedules. So with such high expectations i really didn't know what i was getting myself into, but was very pleasantly surprised. It has the subtle kind of humor, which in my opinion is so much better than all the cruid, outlandish humor used in all the blockbusters now a days. They didn't try to do to many things with the movie, to many little movie type tricks, or have to much going on, like most independent films I've seen tend to try to do. Overall, good movie. I would defiantly recommend.