Thursday 21 August 2014

The Rover - review

David Michod's follow up to the excellent Animal Kingdom is set in the barren, dusty and dangerous Australian outback, ten years after "The Collapse".

It is not specified what the collapse was and what caused it but I would hazard a guess that it timed up with the moment The Inbetweeners set foot on Australian soil.

The Rover has a plot as simple as Robert Pattinson's character.

A group of hoodlums steal loner Guy Pearce's car and he does everything he can to get it back, including capturing R-Patz's character Rey who is brother to one of them and forces him to take them to their hideout.

Substituting car chases and action scenes for long, drawn out scenes of sparse dialogue, empty landscapes and moments of brutal violence, The Rover plays out like an art house Mad Max.

Pearce is excellent as the mysterious loner who slowly reveals his past but keeps us guessing to the Macguffin of why he needs his car back so badly.

Pattinson really does impress with another role following the likes of Cosmopolis that will put the death nail in the coffin of Twilight fans seeking out his post-franchise choices. If I was not aware of him as an actor, I genuinely would have believed him to be an actor on the spectrum or mentally disadvantaged.

The film, like the characters, slowly move towards a bloody showdown that is bound to split opinions.

Will I rewatch Michod's Rover? No never, no more.

3 stars

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