The coming-out of the “Australian Coen brothers” (director, editor, co-producer Nash Edgerton and co-star, co-writer, co-producer Joel Edgerton), an apt analogy as long as the scope of discussion is limited to first films. Apart from the fraternal collaboration, similarities to the Coens’ debut, Blood Simple, can be sensibly confined to the broad neo-noir genre, the basic plot type of worst-laid-plans, and the pitying point of view that permits us, as the plans descend from bad to worse, to see much better than the participants how and where things are going awry. (The catbird seat is crucial to the fun.) If the Edgertons’ first feature lacks the flash of the Coens’, that’s arguably a point in favor of the former, a work of self-restraint and self-effacement that lacks little in fluidity of camera, solidness of construction, steadiness of pace. The narrative agenda of adultery, graft, theft, arson, homicide, blackmail, betrayal, mayhem — all that good stuff that tells us something fundamental about our species — remains resolutely human in scale, renouncing gaudy special effects and amplified action; and the unfamiliarity of the cast, while sacrificing nothing in competence, serves above all to underscore the humanness. To clinch it, the raw emotion of the climax brings home to us that, for all the diverting cat-and-mouse machinery of the plot, it’s human beings who get themselves into these messes, not mice, not cats. Not cogs. With David Roberts and Claire van der Boom. (2009) — Duncan Shepherd
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