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| Red Hill | | Print | |
| Sunday, 17 October 2010 00:27 |
| Kerry and Alex discuss "Red Hill," which recently played at the Chicago International Film Festival and is slated for a limited U.S. release Nov. 5. Kerry: It’s a familiar story: After moving from the city to give his wife some peace and start a family, a young cop (played by True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten) starts his first day of work in the quiet town of Red Hill by (literally) walking into a one-horse town. What comes next could best be described by Matty and Adam as a ‘very bad day’ movie. Taking both from revenge thrillers and the classic American Western, Australian writer-director Patrick Hughes’ debut feature "Red Hill" mixes genre conventions with a few modern ideas thrown in. Alex, did Red Hill kick in the door with guns blazing? Alex: Well, there was certainly a lot of gunfire, but I have to admit that I wasn’t really compelled by much of it. I am typically a fan of the kind of genre-bending that Hughes attempts in this film. The setting is a modern-day Australian town, but the story is a classic western. It’s a similar project to Rian Johnson’s "Brick," a traditional film-noir set in a California high school. I like seeing everyday locales transformed into mythical backdrops for epic stories, throwing reality to the wind in favor of heightened drama and excitement. But there were a lot of missed opportunities here. The theme of this film for me is “not enough.” The bad guy isn’t bad enough; the gunfights aren’t tense enough; the stakes aren’t high enough. I think it was the lack of character that made this film hollow. The actors do a decent job with their parts, but there’s little in the script to turn them into fun characters. They are archetypes, which is not in itself a bad thing. A character need not be something completely new to be compelling, but it is a bad thing when a film rests on the laurels of its genre and asks the audience to assume a character’s motivation rather than showing it onscreen. I felt like this is what was going on too often in "Red Hill." Instead of really fleshing out these characters, we just get some fairly shallow, thematic dialogue that refers to each characters’ archetype (Shane’s wife calls him ‘cowboy’). Even if you’re depicting a familiar world, it still needs to be built from the ground up, defined and redefined. Kerry: I do agree with you about the characters being hollow. In particular, bad guy Jimmy Conway certainly plays like a poor man’s Anton Chigurh. However, I did have fun with this movie. It is by no means high art, but I don’t think it is trying to be either. Filled with incredibly implausible character decisions, pulpy violence, and heavily borrowed references to classic westerns (bordering on just plain silly), I was pretty entertained for the most part. And while much of the movie is extremely predictable, I did appreciate some of the ideas Hughes put out there that I wasn’t necessarily expecting going in. I appreciated that in such a violent movie there is a central character who continually uses his brain over his gun. Kwanten’s Shane Cooper could have been much more interesting for me had this been developed a little more. In addition, the Jimmy Conway character brings up issues of racism and how it is portrayed in film and our national history in an incredibly accessible way for those who want to read into it. I certainly wasn’t expecting that kind of social commentary from this type of genre film, and I didn’t feel too hit over the head by it either. Unfortunately, this film did lose me by the final showdown. Needing more development in some of the characters, as well as higher stakes, it was hard for me to invest in some of them. I think this struck hardest with Old Bill, the police chief. By the time the final shots are fired, I was well out of the story and ready to go. Patrick Hughes not only wrote and directed "Red Hill," he also produced and edited. It is certainly his baby, and I have to wonder if a little collaboration might have helped smooth out some of our issues... Alex: Wow, I was absolutely beaten to death by the social commentary. I think it squelched the very last attempt at making this guy a real character. Attaching a character to a social issue doesn’t in itself make me care. I need a little more humanity than that. I need to care about the character first as a human being and then the director has the power to comment on whatever he wants. We also get two separate explanations of Conway’s backstory, the second one being completely redundant. A cardinal sin in moviemaking: Don’t tell me something I already know, especially not in a montage. I think I’m griping at this movie so much because I really like the premise, and I wanted to love this film. This kind of genre-bending is exactly what I think more movies need to have. It has the power to show people that some stories really are timeless and can still be a lot of fun. On the upside, there were some good set pieces and some lovely photography. I liked the setting of the town a lot. The film had just the right look and feel. There were also some very fun scenes here and there, like Conway’s introduction. I also thought most of the actors deserved kudos, particularly Steve Bisley as Old Bill. At the beginning I totally loved the character and was ready for his personality to be a really weighty pivot point for the story, but then he’s given such a straw-man part. I do think that Hughes strikes a good tone with this movie. He never strays into Tarantino B-movie kitsch or comic book hyper-reality. This film is not an homage to classic Westerns; it really is a Western. The world of Red Hill is one that can stand on its own. It achieves the same smooth mixture of genre form and original setting as Debra Granik’s "Winter’s Bone" did earlier this year (a true film noir set in rural Missouri). It’s too bad that the script was so milquetoast. Kerry: I guess you won’t be coming over for a Rambo marathon then? I thought there were times where "Red Hill" strayed into B-movie kitsch, and that is where I tended to have the most fun. There is nothing straight-faced about killing someone with a boomerang, or that certain four-legged ‘character’ that shows up about an hour in. It is just ridiculous, and I got a few chuckles out of it. Alex: It’s true that the film is fun, but I really don’t think Hughes was going for ridiculous. "Red Hill" is not overly serious but it’s also not making fun of itself. I’d place it squarely in "Brick" and "Winter’s Bone" territory, rather than the Tarantino/Rodriguez ‘camp’. Hughes lovingly bakes the Western genre into his story rather than cutting-and-pasting it jokingly. I feel like there was a real attempt to make this world and these characters three-dimensional. I do applaud Hughes for not taking the easy ‘self-conscious genre piece’ route that treats its stylization as a high art excuse to trot out a bunch of action figure characters, write shoddy dialogue and call it an ‘homage’. "Red Hill" isn’t an homage; it’s at least trying to be the real deal and it almost succeeds. Kerry: There are a lot of things that don’t work in "Red Hill": There were plenty of wasted characters; the villain’s backstory really did get redundant; and the score was occasionally jarring. It isn’t as masterful as "The Proposition" or last summer’s "Animal Kingdom," but I would have no problem recommending "Red Hill" to genre fans. I take it you won’t be recommending it to anyone anytime soon? Alex: Probably not. I like what Hughes attempts, but he just doesn’t quite get there. Still, I think it’s a step in the right direction toward what genre filmmaking should be. "Red Hill" has a lot of heart and Hughes proves that he has a love for the genre and not just an infatuation with style. I’ll be interested in what he does next. |
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