I saw this at the wonderful State Theatre where the sound system, screen and setting highlighted the brilliance of the multi-talented Director Ivan Sen’s cinematography and music. This mystery and thriller follows on from his previous feature Mystery Road, also staring Aaron Pedersen as the hero, Indigenous detective Jay Swan.

The film starts brilliantly just with some of Ivan’s music and some well selected glass plate negative images from various state libraries and archives. They looked brilliant on the big screen and I was reminded of the same technique being used in Ken Burns’ Civil War series.

The two leads and twin heroes of the film are Aaron as Jay and Alex Russell as Josh the local policeman. Alex takes us on a personal discovery of his true character and Aaron learns more of his past. Almost stealing the first part of the film with a very dignified and mystic screen presence is David Gulpilil as Jimmy, a local elder. One of the film’s highlights for me was the bark canoe journey that Jimmy takes Jay on through what looks to be a sacred local gorge. He seemed to me to be singing the local history to Jay through their journey in that gorge. Gorges like this always look like natural cathedrals to me.

Apart from that gorge, the rest of the scenery is almost all desolate – barren, rocky and dusty, but Ivan arranges some beautiful overhead shots that are perfectly framed to highlight the natural colours. These are almost like one of Fred Williams’ later paintings from a similar perspective.

The film reminds us of the choices we make in life and the costs and consequences they have on others and our environment.

The two key creepy baddies in the film are played by Jacki Weaver and David Wenham. Both seem to almost be reprising corrupt creepy bad character roles from previous films. Jacki is a convincingly strong-willed greedy evil manipulator, but I think it is too close to her matriarch role from Animal Kingdom. And David needs to develop a new creepy look that doesn’t involve an awful hair style, some 1980s glasses and clothes from the era of the safari suit. My only other small gripe is that I think we could have seen and heard more of Aaron’s Jay. Jay seemed to have a much stronger presence in Mystery Road.

Both Aaron and Ivan made brief appearances on stage before the film started and answered a couple of questions. The SFF do this kind of thing very well.

My Bruce McAvaney Specialness Rating*: 4/5 (Most people would think this to be special.)