I really try to support Australian films so I bought my ticket to this one blindly, having read no reviews and not knowing anything other than it is by the same director as 'Animal Kingdom', David Michod, and stars Guy Pearce, who I love, and Robert Pattinson, who many of you will know from his turn in the Twilight flicks.
At first I was enjoying this film, which is sort-of thriller/drama, I guess, set in the Australian outback. The story starts with Guy's character Eric's car being stolen and the film is a journey of his desperation to get it back but we don't find out the reason for it until those closing scene of the film and for me, that just made it hard to buy into that desperation. As the film went on I just couldn't help but feel we weren't really getting anywhere. And I was struck by the large amount of violence that doesn't sit comfortably with me personally.
Regardless, Guy Pearce delivers an excellent performance and Robert was a pleasant surprise to this non-Twilight fan. On that note, any fans of Robert Pattinson's work from that franchise, you need to know that The Rover is a very very different film to those ones!
If you have mainstream taste and if you don't get to the movies very often, I'd say you should give this a miss. For the smaller pool of people who like more arthouse stuff and who get to the movies regularly, this film will divide you, if the reviews are anything to go by. They are very mixed - a reminder that ultimately even critics using the same techniques to review a film can easily come to different conclusions.
I've done the reading and broadly grouped them here for those looking for a little extra light reading. Leigh Paatsch's review is probably most in line with my own opinion of the film but I'm listing the positive reviews here too in the interests of balance.
Positive:
Margaret & David on At The Movies ABC TV - 4 stars from both
Variety Magazine
Middle of the road:
Paul Byrnes in Fairfax press - 3 stars (Includes a quote to which I actually said "yes!" out loud when I read it - "Michod has tried to take out everything extraneous, but he ends up with a plot that we have to construct ourselves, and a punchline finale that is more suited to a short film than a feature.")
Not so positive:
Leigh Paatsch in News Ltd press - 2.5 stars
The Guardian - 2 stars
New York Times - 2.5 stars
The UK Telegraph - 2 stars
Trailer here.
At first I was enjoying this film, which is sort-of thriller/drama, I guess, set in the Australian outback. The story starts with Guy's character Eric's car being stolen and the film is a journey of his desperation to get it back but we don't find out the reason for it until those closing scene of the film and for me, that just made it hard to buy into that desperation. As the film went on I just couldn't help but feel we weren't really getting anywhere. And I was struck by the large amount of violence that doesn't sit comfortably with me personally.
Regardless, Guy Pearce delivers an excellent performance and Robert was a pleasant surprise to this non-Twilight fan. On that note, any fans of Robert Pattinson's work from that franchise, you need to know that The Rover is a very very different film to those ones!
If you have mainstream taste and if you don't get to the movies very often, I'd say you should give this a miss. For the smaller pool of people who like more arthouse stuff and who get to the movies regularly, this film will divide you, if the reviews are anything to go by. They are very mixed - a reminder that ultimately even critics using the same techniques to review a film can easily come to different conclusions.
I've done the reading and broadly grouped them here for those looking for a little extra light reading. Leigh Paatsch's review is probably most in line with my own opinion of the film but I'm listing the positive reviews here too in the interests of balance.
Positive:
Margaret & David on At The Movies ABC TV - 4 stars from both
Variety Magazine
Middle of the road:
Paul Byrnes in Fairfax press - 3 stars (Includes a quote to which I actually said "yes!" out loud when I read it - "Michod has tried to take out everything extraneous, but he ends up with a plot that we have to construct ourselves, and a punchline finale that is more suited to a short film than a feature.")
Not so positive:
Leigh Paatsch in News Ltd press - 2.5 stars
The Guardian - 2 stars
New York Times - 2.5 stars
The UK Telegraph - 2 stars
Trailer here.