Susan Granger’s review of “Red Hill” (Strand Releasing)
The Western genre is revived in this raw Australian thriller, set in the tiny high country town of Red Hill.
As the story begins, city cop Shane Cooper (Ryan Kwanten) is reporting for duty on his first day as a newbie police officer in the remote, rugged, rural outpost. Since his fragile, weepy wife Alice (Claire van der Bloom) is very pregnant, he leaves the car with her and walks to work, inadvertently leaving his gun in one of the packing boxes at home. This initial excursion into town is interrupted by Cooper’s suspicion that a ravenous panther is on the loose, feasting on local livestock, and news that a convicted killer – Aborigine Jimmy Conway (Tom E. Lewis) – has escaped from nearby Westin Bay maximum-security prison where he’s serving time for murder. As it turns out, scarily burned/scarred Conway is determined to wreak blood-splattering revenge against those whom he feels did him wrong, particularly William “Old Bill” Jones (Steve Bishop), the Red Hill sheriff.
Writer/director/editor/producer Patrick Hughes did the filming in four weeks, using secondhand Hollywood film stock and predictably evoking memories of the far-better Coen brothers’ “No Country for Old Men” (2007) in which a scary, savage killer ignites a vengeful bloodbath. Only, here, the reference is to Australia’s deep-seated guilt over its shameful treatment of the native Aborigines. Cinematographer Tim Hudson’s foreboding depiction of the barren landscape adds to the feeling of utter desolation, amplified by the urgency of Dimitri Golovko and Charlie Parr’s score. And it’s curious to see Ryan Kwanten, best known as Sookie’s dim-witted brother Jason Stackhouse on HBO’s “True Blood”), utilizing his native Australian accent.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Red Hill” is a morally simplistic yet suspenseful 6, a visually evocative but formulaic thriller.
