Before seeing Red Hill, two things came to mind when I thought of actor Ryan Kwanten. One, what a silly last name, and two, he plays the dumb jock brother of the gloriously well-endowed Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) on HBO’s True Blood. Well, now, I think of three things. The third? He played an awesome Australian hero cop.
Red Hill tells the story of constable Shane Cooper (Kwanten), who’s starting the first day of his new gig in the teeny, tiny outpost of Red Hill. Treated like the big city outsider he is by the entire 304-person population, Cooper just wants to get through the day and go home to his pregnant wife Alice (Claire Van Der Boom, The Pacific), who is also the reason he transferred in the first place. Unfortunately, he has bad luck of the John McClane level. The outpost is thrown into a state of total disarray when the outpost catches wind that resident murderer Jimmy Conway (Tom E. Lewis, The Proposition) has escaped prison and has a homecoming on his mind. What follows is a ludicrously thrilling, endlessly entertaining game of cat and mouse as Conway cuts a bloody swath through Red…
Before seeing Red Hill, two things came to mind when I thought of actor Ryan Kwanten. One, what a silly last name, and two, he plays the dumb jock brother of the gloriously well-endowed Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) on HBO’s True Blood. Well, now, I think of three things. The third? He played an awesome Australian hero cop.
Red Hill tells the story of constable Shane Cooper (Kwanten), who’s starting the first day of his new gig in the teeny, tiny outpost of Red Hill. Treated like the big city outsider he is by the entire 304-person population, Cooper just wants to get through the day and go home to his pregnant wife Alice (Claire Van Der Boom, The Pacific), who is also the reason he transferred in the first place. Unfortunately, he has bad luck of the John McClane level. The outpost is thrown into a state of total disarray when the outpost catches wind that resident murderer Jimmy Conway (Tom E. Lewis, The Proposition) has escaped prison and has a homecoming on his mind. What follows is a ludicrously thrilling, endlessly entertaining game of cat and mouse as Conway cuts a bloody swath through Red Hill and Cooper tries to stop him.
Only knowing Kwanten from True Blood, I was quite pleased with his performance as Cooper. He was a genuinely good guy who wanted to take care of his wife, do his job, and live his life. Top cop and general head honcho of Red Hill, Old Bill (Steve Bisley, Mad Max), was similarly played quite well. He was the gruff, grouchy police chief we’ve seen a million times, but he played it so well, I didn’t care. The other two cops, the overly-aggressive, jerky Manning (Richard Sutherland) and loveable, dopey Barlow (Kevin Harrington) were minor characters, but again, they played their parts well. Cooper’s wife Alice was the weakest link, delegated to glorified plot device, but she didn’t let that stop her from playing the part well, just like the rest of the cast.
Scarier than any modern villain I’ve seen to date, the real star of the film is the psychopathic, Aborigine Jimmy. He doesn’t utter a single word for almost the entire movie, his burned visage is classic Bad Guy, he’s endlessly skilled with firearms, more resourceful than an Eagle Scout, and of course, he’s damn near invincible. There is a scene in the hotel where he walks up to a juke box and plays a song, and if he hadn’t been established as such a terrifying force, it would have been silly. Instead, it added another chilling layer to the revenge-driven madman. Almost everything he does doesn’t make sense until the climax of the movie, and by God, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Being the worldly guy that I am, I always imagined that Australia consisted of the Outback and…well, the Outback. Red Hill shattered my illusions and showed a side of Australia I didn’t know existed, a side ripe for the Western theme the movie develops from the word ‘go.’ Snow-capped mountains, trees, and grassy plains filled the screen, and my jaw was on the ground as I beheld the beauty of this newly-discovered side of the former prison country. The tiny outpost of Red Hill itself brought to mind visions of the small Alaskan town of Cicily from the classic television show Northern Exposure.
The most entertaining thing about this film is that writer-director Patrick Hughes has weaved a classic Old West story into a modern-day cop thriller. It brought to mind the film Brick, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt film noir set in a modern day high school, with its seamless integration of the genre’s stand-bys. Everything you needed for an Old West movie was there: horses, guns, shootouts, a small town, an unstoppable bad guy, a troubled good guy, revenge, sprawling landscapes, and cowboy hats. The director was inspired by films like High Plains Drifter, No Country for Old Men, and Deliverance, and it shows in the best ways possible. Hughes has delivered to us a work of art, a classic battle of good and evil, a beautifully crafted tale of revenge, and a wholly entertaining film. I could not have been more pleased with the outcome.
With its sprawling landscapes and epic shootouts, this movie should be truly be seen in theaters to get its full effect. It doesn’t hurt that it’s 96 minutes of exhilarating, thrilling action. I would see Red Hill again in theaters in a heartbeat (and fully plan to), I will by it on DVD, and I won’t rest until everyone I know has seen it. True Blood’s Jason Stackhouse might have aspirations of being a sheriff’s deputy, but Shane Cooper is living Stackhouse’s dream. He’s a bad-ass cop who doesn’t give up, and it is a delight to watch him in action. Even if you’re not a fan of Westerns, don’t let this movie pass you by.
Overall Score: 8.40 – Great. (Movies that score between 8.00 and 8.50 are great representations of their genre that everyone should see in theaters on opening night.)
