|
|
| Tookey's Review |
|
| Pro Reviews |
|
| Mixed Reviews |
|
| Anti Reviews |
|
| Cast |
|
| |
 |
| |
| Released: |
2011 |
| |
|
| Genre: |
DRAMA
OVERRATED
CRIME
BIOPIC
|
| |
|
| Origin: |
Australia |
| |
|
| Length: |
115 |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
Certain to be a critics’ favourite because it’s so depressing, Snowtown starts off in squalor and goes downhill from there.
|
Reviewed by Chris Tookey
|
It is a relentlessly ugly tale, based on a regrettably true story, about Australian serial killer John Bunting (chillingly played by Daniel Henshall), who murdered eleven people in Adelaide’s northern suburbs between 1992 and 1999.
The film concerns itself not so much with why he did it, but how he got away with doing it for so long, and even managed to recruit helpers. The merciless depiction of an alienated, uneducated, amoral underclass is, I fear, equally applicable to Britain as it is to Australia.
Director Justin Kurzel’s background is in music videos, but he goes for a grimy realism that makes the average Ken Loach film look like Lady Windermere’s Fan.
We see Bunting through the eyes of Jamie, a gormless sixteen year-old (played by first-time actor Lucas Pittaway, pictured, who looks like a young Heath Ledger without the acting ability). He’s a shy victim of a paedophile rapist and is passively drawn into Bunting’s circle in much the same way as the fictitious teenager at the heart of last year’s film about Aussie lowlife, Animal Kingdom.
One difference is that Jamie never escapes, which makes the story even more depressing.
Whereas Animal Kingdom had black humour, a smart pace and a relatively straightforward narrative, Snowtown is more of a viewing ordeal.
The film’s biggest asset is Henshall’s portrait of Bunting, a charismatic spokesman for Australia’s bigoted, anti-gay underclass.
Where it falls down is in not having the slightest interest in the victims. Some were paedophiles, and many were gay; but one was an obese woman, and another was a heroin addict.
Be warned also that the film features graphic torture and cruelty to animals.
It achieves everything it sets out to do, but I’m not sure who would enjoy it. It’s dour, heartless and one-paced, with so many puzzling gaps in the storytelling, that it isn’t even slightly entertaining.
|
|
|
, Lucas Pittaway, Bob Adriaens