Review: Last Ride

Last Ride
Dir. Glendyn Ivin
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 90mins

A large number of working directors in Australia hail from backgrounds in short films. Not many have gotten quite the level of success that Glendyn Ivin though, who won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for Cracker Bag in 2003. An auspicious beginning to a career, no doubt, but having now seen his debut feature, the well-tread tale of Last Ride, I'm not sure he's utilised it to his advantage. While the story told in this film may appeal to the nodding heads of the Australian film industry who think to be worthy of accolades you must be raw and tough, I couldn't help but feel it was another case of a director telling a story we've all seen plenty of times before.

Another example of wallowing in lower class miserabilism without the tact, beauty and poignancy of this years Samson and Delilah or the horror and ferocity of Rowan Woods' The Boys. I understand it is meant to be some "harsh" and "powerful" portrayal of the "real" and "uncompromising" Australia that our filmmakers just love to force upon us, but I wanted to throw my hands up into the air and yell "I KNOW!" Australia is filled with a lot of terrible people who do terrible things. I don't need to see this again and especially when it's done like this. Much like the dreaded coming-of-age genre, this sub-section of Australian film has grown immensely tiresome and there's only so far that pretty (if still rather ho-hum) cinematography can get you.


Seemingly on the run from something, Hugo Weaving and newcomer Tom Russell play father and son Kev and Chook. What details Ivin does give us about their past come in quick bursts and they actually provide the film with its strongest moments. Essentially a road movie, Last Ride follows these guys as they navigate the harsh landscape of Australia and Greig Fraser's cinematography does an impressive job of expressing the ideas that Ivin has. Slowly revealing their former life in flashbacks, we soon discover the secrets behind the mysterious character of "Max" (John Brumpton) and why Kev is so desperate to not be found.

Tellingly, the film's best moments are indeed these tiny fragments that shoehorn themselves into the tale. The small flashbacks we get of Weaving and Russell before they ran away are the strongest aspect and hold one of the film's key moments, but it is barely expanded upon. A character played by the impressive Anita Hegh, a former flame of Kev, is another strong aspect, but is quickly disposed of by the film for more scenes of these two guys staring out of car windows at barren terrain. It doesn't help that Weaving is far from his best. He's done this performance before and could do it in his sleep. The standout, however, is ten-year-old Tom Russell who displays more conflicted emotions bubbling underneath his surface than a lot of adult actors could manage.


As the film progresses to it's natural conclusion I eventually stopped caring about the story Ivin was telling. More equating of masculinity to violence and more ponderous hypothesising about the bond between father and son. Weaving's Kev is a vile man and a cliched representation of a real Aussie bloke. Bashing his son for wearing make-up, teaching him to shoot and being abusive to perfectly innocent people. It's not so much tough viewing as just unpleasant. Perhaps that's a personal bug I must bear, but Ivin just does not do enough to warrant telling this story of a man so un-equipped for fatherhood yet again. Only in a sequence of quiet beauty at a location called Lake Gairdner - great location scouting there - does it all seem to actually come together and feel truly organic and less like a tired excursion into woe.

I can't imagine any regular filmgoer wanting to subject themselves to this. It doesn't have the power of other films of this kind and as the current box office success of Samson and Delilah proves, you really need to be spectacular to get audiences to see these gritty tales of life and hardships on the fringes. Last Ride just does not do enough to warrant sitting through it. D+

Review: Samson & Delilah

Samson & Delilah
Dir. Warwick Thornton
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 97mins

The tagline of Warwick Thornton's starling debut feature Samson & Delilah is "True Love" and true love, as they say, is hard work. Being an Australian film you can probably already tell that this story isn't going to be easy, but some the harrowing moments that Thornton puts on screen seem to bring new definition to the phrase "doing it tough". However, the true wonder of this movie is that in spite of the hardships and the troubles that plague these two achingly beautiful characters is that there is indeed true love and it shines brightly.

Samson & Delilah, no connection at all to the biblical tale, has quickly become the buzz title of the Australian film industry and with just cause. It premiered at the Bigpond Adelaide Film Festival only two months ago and has become a word-of-mouth sensation, and just recently was selected for the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes. It really isn't hard at all to see why.


Beginning in a remote outback community, Delilah (Marisa Gibson) lives with her Nana (Gibson's real life Nana Mitjili Gibson) making a small living from selling authentic dot paintings, which unbeknown to them get sold for thousands of dollars in the city. Samson (Rowan MacNamara) lives nearby and has nothing to do except sniff petrol cans and roll around in a wheelchair. Once Nana dies these two souls, seemingly destined for one another from the outset, set off on a road trip that goes from bad to worse to tragic to near-catastrophic. But while this could easily be taken as not being an "easy" film to watch, there is just such authentic humanity and beauty in it, particularly the closing passages, that it will continue to swim through your mind for days and weeks on end. It still swirls around in my mind and I saw it a month ago!

The film works on so many levels. Is it simple a love story? Is it a tragedy about drug addiction? Is it a realistic portrayal of Aboriginal life? Is it a cautionary tale to everyone about their conceptions of people or is it an indictment on this country's treatment of Aboriginal people? It's all of these and more. It's a letter from Thornton to his audience. He wants us to think and feel. He wants us to breathe the same air as these characters and he achieves this with amazing sense of place. Cinematography by Thornton is gorgeous and the simple yet stark production design by Daran Fulham is really great at identifying a strong sense of place.


There are scenes in this movie that will, truly and honestly, break your heart. Watch as Delilah tries to sell a dot painting to the white cafe patrons or as she delicately holds a desperate Samson. The performances are quite astonished, particularly that of Marissa Gibson. She barely speaks after the first few scenes - McNamara on the other hand had only one word of dialogue for the entire film if I remember correctly - but evokes so much. Their world is one of silence and yet we can understand so much about it, and that's an incredibly testament to Thornton and his filmmaking partners.

Samson & Delilah is a great piece of filmmaking and one that you will not forget in a hurry and one can only hope that Australians - and, if they get the chance, international - audiences take a chance on it. A