Thursday, March 09, 2006

The Proposition


I know what's going to happen with this movie. The vast majority of people are going to focus on the ‘sudden’ violence and label this movie as a ‘nasty’. Well sorry but I just don’t agree with this. The fact is that the movie is set in a place and time that was particularly violent, 19th Century Colonial Australia. If you can get past the fact that it is violent you will be able to appreciate fine performances from Ray Winstone, Emily Watson, Guy Pearce, John Hurt and Danny Huston.
There is no clear good guy in this film with both sides fighting with their morels to make a life in this remote part of the world. It’s clearly a hard life on the border of society and you can imagine the pong given off by these people when you see their filthy bodies and clothes, rotting teeth, dehydrated sun burnt skin, constantly covered with bot flies and drunk for most of the time. A visual feast just begging for the invention of Smell-O-Vision!
There is a warning at the beginning of the movie that the film might cause offence to Aborigines, this is fair enough, but a word of warning could have been added for those Irish viewers too as there are a few salacious comments about the Irish that might get a bit of a reaction too!
About half the people I saw this film with found the gore a bit too much to take or just didn’t find the film enjoyable for one reason or another. I thought it was great and would definitely watch it again. If you are reading this before seeing the film then I hope it prepares you for the violence and allows you to appreciate a great movie.

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