Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Proposition (2005)



The Proposition wastes no time in setting up its very simple premise: Charlie Burns enters into a deal with Outback law enforcement wherein he can save his gentle and most likely innocent younger brother from the gallows by killing his older brother, who happens to be a vicious bastard. But the film has a lot more on its mind, as they say, than just catching the bad guy or how being involved in such a task affects the mind of Charlie, played brilliantly by a barely recognizable Guy Pearce. It's fairly violent and brutal, perhaps gratuitously so, but then again I don't know much about what settlers or Australian Aborigines were up to in the 1880s, so for all I know it's completely accurate. The screenplay was written by Nick Cave, and it's very impressive for a guy who is first and foremost a great songwriter. He also teams up with Warren Ellis to write the score, like he did later for The Assassination of Jesse James. I think of The Proposition as a nice companion piece to that film, both set in the 1880s but halfway around the world from each other, and both worth watching even for casual fans of the genre.
IMDB

1 comment:

Soiled Sinema said...

That head-explode scene still makes me cringe. An amazing new wave Western.