David Michôd's new picture, showing as a special screening here, could perhaps be labelled dystopian ozbilly noir: violent, alienated, self-consciously speckled with gruesome little details. His first feature, Animal Kingdom in 2010, was a powerhouse gangland thriller set in Melbourne; hopes couldn't have been higher for this followup movie. But expectations have to be managed downwards, a little. The Rover is an undoubtedly atmospheric and brutal drama set in an apocalyptic future after a "collapse": the endless bush has telegraph poles on which crucified bodies are displayed from some unspecified insurgency or crackdown and the economy now depends on US dollars. It has something of a surlier, meaner Mad Max, a flavour of Australian New Wave pictures like Wake in Fright, and even something of Spielberg's Duel. After a terrific start, the film begins to meander, to lose its way, and its grip.
Michôd developed the script with actor Joel Edgerton who may well have expected to get one of the lead roles — perhaps the one that has gone to Robert Pattinson, whose character Rey is from the American South, with some slightly Rada-ish hillbilly acting. Exactly how he and his brother Henry (Scoot McNairy) have come to be in this ruined Australia is never explained. Rey and Henry, along with a couple of other guys, Caleb (Tawanda Manyimo) and Archie (David Field) are making their getaway after violent, bungled armed robbery: but Rey has been left behind in the dusty road for dead. The gang crash their truck, and impulsively steal a parked car. This belongs to a grizzled, careworn, bearded loner, played with blazing-eyed intensity by Guy Pearce. With fanatical determination, this sets out to get his car back, using Pattinson's wounded brother to help him in this quest, and to buy a gun to enforce a terrible revenge out in the desolate Outback. For Pearce, it seems that the theft of his car is the last straw. Perhaps it is the last vestige of his self-respect, or perhaps, somewhere in his scorched soul, he feels that a brutally violent revenge over the matter of his car is an appropriately suicidal farewell to all human happiness. Who exactly he is, and how exactly he has reached this stage is not clear. The nearest he comes to demonstrating human emotion or sympathy is when he sees half-a-dozen or so dogs kept in cages in a garage belonging to a harassed doctor. Perhaps it is a key to his personality. In fact, the film itself is a bit of a shaggy dog story.
The script twists and turns as it brings Pearce together with Robert Pattinson's poor, ignorant, incompetent young robber. Pearce had actually managed to give chase to the gang in their own truck, which turns out to be perfectly drive-able: it is plausible that the robbers would abandon their vehicle as casually as they abandoned Rey, although why they don't simply demand it back once they realise it's undamaged isn't satisfactorily explained. On his way to Rey, and later, Pearce's character makes a tour of all the freaky, scary figures out there in the wasteland: people in ruined shacks trying to sell stuff, and people who have become feral in a weird Diane Arbus-world of their own. At one stage, he stumbles upon what appears to be a travelling circus which is no longer in a position to do any travelling — and finds some dwarves, asks them if they have seen anyone in his car, and if he can buy a weapon. It is certainly very creepy, but very contrived setpiece of violent strangeness. The tension leaks, while Pearce roves around the dusty wasteland having these unsettling, but random encounters.
Michôd creates a good deal of ambient menace in The Rover; Pearce has a simmering presence. But I felt there was a bit of muddle, and the clean lines of conflict and tension had been blurred: the dystopian future setting doesn't add much and hasn't been very rigorously imagined. I even had the suspicion that the screenplay should perhaps have gone through one or two more drafts, or perhaps returned to an earlier draft, when casting was clearer. Well, Michôd certainly delivers some brain-frazzling heat and directionless despair.
