| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Rose Byrne | ... | ||
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Tyler Coppin | ... | |
| John Batchelor | ... | ||
| Hugo Weaving | ... | ||
| Matthew Le Nevez | ... |
Art Walker
(as Matt Le Nevez)
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Andrew Nolte | ... |
The Subjects Trumpet
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Daniel Potts | ... |
The Subjects Bass
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Chris Wood | ... |
The Subjects Banjo
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Braydon Chlow | ... |
The Subjects Drummer
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John Lakos | ... |
Art's Corner Man
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Brendan Guerin | ... | |
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Graham Murray | ... |
Referee #1
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Pia Miranda | ... | |
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Kuni Hashimoto | ... | |
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Bob Murdoch | ... |
Roy
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The story is about Iris' rise to the apex of a love/power triangle that includes her roguish English lover, McHeath and Art, an earnest young boxer. Within the flawed moral landscape, each character struggles to establish their sovereignty.
Ogilvie's big movie shows his exceptional craft in film making. The visuals alone are stunning, combined with top end editing, sets, and sound. The support players were almost better than the stars. the movie is flawed in other areas, a couple of slightly off performances noticeably from Hugo Weaving (what accent was he going for?) and Nevez (unconvinced of why we should care about him), and the story was so low key "small time crooks" that maybe the production values were just too good for it. Weaving was a little unconvincing as a tough guy although he could easily pull off scary. The violent scenes conflicted with him being a reasonably nice guy to his gf and taking sh!t from his underlings.
It's hard to know exactly why it didn't blow minds, but it certainly didn't blow. Some great lines and ideas going down in the script. Ogilvie shows class and control, craft and art, and I'd like to see where he goes next. Most definitely an art film rather than a big budget affair but with the look and feel it alludes to much more.