So if I'd known David Michôd (Animal Kingdom) directed The Rover, I wouldn't have watched it. But the BBC website listed it in its monthly "Films to Watch This Month" piece a while ago and, being a bit disconnected from popular culture, I took the Beeb on its word.
The Rover, like Animal Kingdom, is about mentally challenged violent thugs wandering a landscape of plot holes. Like Mad Max it is post-apocalyptical and set in Australia. Like Mad Max 3 there are random Americans. Unlike Mad Max the infrastructure of the country still works: petrol is readily available and there is mains electricity. Which is in direct contradiction to the overall setting, but it's Michôd, after all.
Now I'm no movie director, nor am I an actor. Hell, I'm not even a good reviewer. But I have seen enough movies to have seen movies about movie making, and invariably an actor will ask the director something like "What's my character's motivation in this scene?"
Guy Pearce has been around, and I'm sure he would've asked that exact question at least once. Probably several times, in fact. Such as when his character rushes to fight three armed men who, with a firearm each, have three guns more than Guy does. "What's the motivation, David? Why would anyone do that? It doesn't make sense."
Similarly, Robert Pattison might ask "David, why is my character holding up his old gang? I mean, what the hell? At no point does the movie suggest I've changed sides, just that I get on with Guy's character."
My favourite would be the question from one of the baddies: "David, so my character's just knocked out Guy's character. We're in a post-apocalyptical world of no rules and zero consequences where everyone is willing to murder at the drop of hat. What possible motivation would my character, nay, the whole gang, have for a) knocking out Guy's character rather than killing him; b) driving him into the scrub in our old car; c) leaving the car there and the keys as well? Why wouldn't we just kill him and take both cars?"
The car thing is the central question to this movie. The entire plot revolves around Guy getting his car back as his dead dog is in the boot and he wants to bury it. (Oh yeah, spoiler alert. As if you care. Even if you watch it you won't.) And yet the bad guys, for want of a better term in a movie where everyone is a bad guy, hang onto this car throughout. They don't take the available Humvee, for example, nor do they take their own pickup back. Instead, they crowd into a small sedan in summer with a rotting canine in the boot.
I mean, seriously: WTF?
"WTF" pretty much sums up the entire film. Don't see it, it's horrible. It was slightly more bearable than Animal Kingdom because Michôd only pissed on the memory of the fictional Mad Max, not the very real Constables Tynan and Eyre, murdered at Walsh Street. (What kind of a cheap bottom-of-the-class-at-film-school trick is that?)
-1.5 Money Trains.
The Rover, like Animal Kingdom, is about mentally challenged violent thugs wandering a landscape of plot holes. Like Mad Max it is post-apocalyptical and set in Australia. Like Mad Max 3 there are random Americans. Unlike Mad Max the infrastructure of the country still works: petrol is readily available and there is mains electricity. Which is in direct contradiction to the overall setting, but it's Michôd, after all.
Now I'm no movie director, nor am I an actor. Hell, I'm not even a good reviewer. But I have seen enough movies to have seen movies about movie making, and invariably an actor will ask the director something like "What's my character's motivation in this scene?"
Guy Pearce has been around, and I'm sure he would've asked that exact question at least once. Probably several times, in fact. Such as when his character rushes to fight three armed men who, with a firearm each, have three guns more than Guy does. "What's the motivation, David? Why would anyone do that? It doesn't make sense."
Similarly, Robert Pattison might ask "David, why is my character holding up his old gang? I mean, what the hell? At no point does the movie suggest I've changed sides, just that I get on with Guy's character."
My favourite would be the question from one of the baddies: "David, so my character's just knocked out Guy's character. We're in a post-apocalyptical world of no rules and zero consequences where everyone is willing to murder at the drop of hat. What possible motivation would my character, nay, the whole gang, have for a) knocking out Guy's character rather than killing him; b) driving him into the scrub in our old car; c) leaving the car there and the keys as well? Why wouldn't we just kill him and take both cars?"
The car thing is the central question to this movie. The entire plot revolves around Guy getting his car back as his dead dog is in the boot and he wants to bury it. (Oh yeah, spoiler alert. As if you care. Even if you watch it you won't.) And yet the bad guys, for want of a better term in a movie where everyone is a bad guy, hang onto this car throughout. They don't take the available Humvee, for example, nor do they take their own pickup back. Instead, they crowd into a small sedan in summer with a rotting canine in the boot.
I mean, seriously: WTF?
"WTF" pretty much sums up the entire film. Don't see it, it's horrible. It was slightly more bearable than Animal Kingdom because Michôd only pissed on the memory of the fictional Mad Max, not the very real Constables Tynan and Eyre, murdered at Walsh Street. (What kind of a cheap bottom-of-the-class-at-film-school trick is that?)
-1.5 Money Trains.
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