Red Hill (2010)

Red Hill is written and directed by Patrick Hughes. It stars Ryan Kwanten, Steve Bisley, Tom E. Lewis and Claire van der Boom. Music is by Dmitri Golovko and cinematography by Tim Hudson.

Young city cop Shane Cooper (Kwanten) gets a transfer to Red Hill, a place he hopes is a quiet enough town for himself and his pregnant wife to successfully raise a family. But his arrival at work coincides with the escape from prison of aborigine Jimmy Conway (Lewis), who is heading into town with revenge firmly on his mind.

Jimmy Conway has escaped and he's bringing hell into town.

Utterly splendid Neo-Western out of Australia. For his feature film debut, Patrick Hughes has crafted a loving homage to the Western genre whilst also imbuing his film with its own suspenseful blood. Blending Ozploitaton thriller values with Western genre staples of the past, Red Hill unspools on narrative terms as a gritty and rugged revenge piece.

Red Hill the town is fronted by gruff sheriff Old Bill (Bisley), he leads a pack of scuzzy characters who consider it their town and god help anyone who stands in their way. Into this maelstrom comes fresh faced Shane Cooper (yes the name is Alan Ladd and High Noon purposely spliced together), a genuine and honest copper harnessing a tragedy as well as a moral code that's not for shaking.

After quickly finding out that Old Bill is lacking in human graces, Shane finds himself coming face to face with Conway, who is all the horsemen of the apocalypse rolled into one. Face badly scarred and adorned with weapons and duster, Conway seems to have supernatural resources to go with his expert tracking skills and knowledge of the surrounding outback terrain (so think High Plains Drifter & Chato's Land then).

How come, though, that as he callously goes about killing off members of the scuzzy crew, each time he meets up with Shane, who is in full tilt survival mode, Conway refuses to kill Shane? And just what is that symbolic Panther doing stalking the edges of the landscape? One and the same, perhaps? It will of course all be revealed, and in truth it's no great surprise, the beauty is in how Hughes has toyed with our perceptions about Conway, this in turn makes for a cracker-jack finale.

Performances are superbly in tune with the material, Cooper, Lewis and Bisley really manage to steer their respective characters away from being histrionic or cartoonish. Musically it features stabs of delightful grungy rock blending in with Golovko's mournfully ironic score. The widescreen photography is most interesting, in that there's often smart shifting between a washed out palette to emphasise the remoteness of the setting, to opened up capturing of the beautiful vistas (filmed on location in Omeo, Victoria). The Blu-ray is a must for anyone interested in the film.

The sparse location is matched by sparse dialogue, there is no need for extraneous conversations or pointless filler, Hughes knows what he is doing. It's made with love and respect to one of the finest of film genres, and hooray to that! 8/10

Fmovies: The trailer for Red Hill had me curious, but it turns out it's really bad. Essentially, Red Hill wants to be an Australian No Country For Old Men, but just fails to pull it off.

There is no story to speak of for the majority of the movie, then when it finally decides to arrive you really wish it hadn't. A simple revenge flick quickly becomes saturated with boring scenes, plot holes, gaffes, and bad writing (including but not limited to panthers).

Acting is abysmal all round, most notably Ryan Kwanten in the lead as Shane Cooper, and Kevin Harrington as Slim also gets a special mention. Tommy Lewis as Jimmy Conway could have been replaced by a statue, as he doesn't move, blink, or even attempt acting at any point. In any event, the actors were largely hindered by meagre dialogue and poor direction.

Director Patrick Hughes stole everything in this production (lighting, music, etc.) from about three other films. Red Hill is entirely unoriginal and cliché in every possible way. Having said that, Hughes has not stitched a few films together to make something entertaining or... watchable, but a boring mess encouraging you to check your watch frequently.

A western set in Australia. I like the idea, but bloody hell, mate...

There are a couple of times when there's what I judge an unnecessary jump in the plot line to accommodate something improbable in an otherwise realistic situation. They're minor flaws that actually brought a smile to my face rather than a groan, but they seem a little out of place even though this is an Australian film and they're famous for that kind of inclusion.

It didn't ruin my evening but it would have improved the film to have passed on them. This is an easily understood plot: a cop needs to get to a peaceful town in order that his wife can successfully carry their baby. Naturally, things go wrong his first day when a convicted murderer heads to the remote town to wreak havoc on his accusers. There little flashy gunplay or inspirational heroics, but the film will grow on you because it's very human and understandable.

All roles are artfully rendered by the cast and there's the constant feeling that you are there in a remote but beautiful area of Australia.

Red Hill fmovies. I have watched thousands of films over the years and I am not saying this was the best film I have ever seen but it was so good I registered just to review it.

Most of this thriller is set at night, which makes it very edgy and atmospheric. The acting is top notch, good characters and a strong storyline.

It is the story of a young cop who transferred to a quiet Australian town to alleviate the stress on his pregnant wife who previously suffered a miscarriage. On his first day at the office an escaped convict comes to town, intent on bloody revenge.

An excellent film all round.

For quite some time now, amongst the 1000's of movies I have watched, I noticed a certain ennui to my movie watching, as other people have said, this has been done before, most notably in American westerns. The wronged man comes back to reap his vengeance on the evil-doers. If this had been strictly formulaic and badly acted and filmed i would not have seen it all the way through to the ending. However, I was pleasantly entertained, I don't think it was too obvious a plot, it had me guessing for a while. The escaped convict looked suitably elemental and Ryan Kwanten as the young cop on his first bloody day in the outback played it well. Yes, there were some strange parts to the movie, although I just found the inclusion of the wild animal an amusing aside, and not to be taken too seriously. The score was good, the atmosphere was suitably bleak and a lot of it filmed at night to add to the tension. I think people expect too much these days, no this was not Unforgiven, but for a low budget movie out of Australia I thought this was a good remake of the classic revenge western. Certainly worth a viewing if you love westerns, or if you like revenge plots. For a Sunday afternoon, you could do a whole lot worse.

When Kane Hodder says, this is the best movie that ran on Frightfest (Festival in London), you don't argue with him. Well not to his face that is. Unless Freddy's got your back ... Seriously though: This movie is very fine crafted and has not only a great ambiguous feeling about it, it has also great performances.

You may know where this is heading, because the hints are very obvious, but get them or not, I don't think that should matter much. I do think that you can enjoy the movie either way. It is violent and it is very dark and bleak too. But it also has a counterbalance to all that. The reason Kane Hodder liked the movie? Because it has one of the greatest villains in it (and coming from Kane, that says something)

Edit: Of course Kane meant best movie besides Hatchet 2 (the latter being his real favorite), that was shown at the Festival too.