Strictly average movie

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

The first must-see film of the year.

The acting of Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney (who play a married couple) is extremely good. The actual film is O.K., but one has to ask why it did so poorly...particularly in America. The answer (I believe) is the case of the missing scene. When four men find a young ladies dead body during a fishing expedition, they just go ahead with their fishing. No communication, no debate about what would be the correct course of action--nothing.! It is true however, that some Aussie "blokes" would just carry on with their watery activity. Whatever--I am sure this--and some other typically Aussie bloke activities may have confused the global audience. Anyway this movie has a spooky atmosphere from start to finish--like there is some impending doom on the horizon. It has the power to unsettle the viewer. There are some rather ridiculous interactions between Aboriginals and whites, but generally its an effective drama / murder story.

The premise for this film is fantastic: four guys discover a dead body on a fishing trip... on that level it's mysterious and intriguing and a super platform for developing any number of themes. This was why I watched the film. Also on a positive note: the performances are generally good, it's shot very well and the locations are beautiful.The problem is, the film is very very badly written - it lacks identity and consistency developing its themes and the result is an in-cohesive and confusing mess, and the considerable potential is not realised in any area.A story is meant to serve its audience. At its core this film (when it eventually makes its mind up) is a drama about a community divided on race lines by the fishermen's failure to report the discovery of the dead black girl immediately and in the appropriate manner.It is just completely unbelievable that this community would be so exercised over this matter, yet by all appearances completely indifferent about the actual rape/murder of this girl - which the audience might reasonably conclude to be the work of a psychopathic serial killer still at large within the community.Far too much time is wasted deliberately misleading the audience into believing that this story is going to be about the killer, or the murder case, or even the abnormal 7 year old girl seemingly obsessed with the occult. For example, mid-film we learn the killer has the victim's car in his barn - what purpose does this scene serve other than to confuse? What does the film gain from the murder of the class guinea pig (incredibly, another crime which attracts a more moral outrage from the characters than the rape/murder of the girl the men find!)?The consequence is that not enough time is put into developing any of the characters, who end up feeling very clichéd and one dimensional. There's almost none of the debate about what to do with the body, which is surely at the heart of developing the 4 central male characters. There's only the most superficial examination of the aboriginal reaction - the expected knee jerk 'they wouldn't have done it if it was a white girl', followed by reprisals and then sustained anger... with the reconciliation in the final scene feeling completely out of place next to the 2 hours which preceded it. If this was to be the central theme of the film, these characters should've been developed far more fully and thoughtfully. Instead, the result is flimsy, glib, illogical, unresolved, insensitive and offensive. And this is Australian cinema at its best? Don't waste your time, it's atrocious.

Starts with great promise about the story of a town now gone and a new town replacing it. The old town is now under water and there are references to zombies by first the father and then friend of the little Tom. The children (Caylin-Calandria) in the film display a lot of crazy behaviou r for no real good reason. One explanation for all of this is to set the scene - but this film, in cinematic terms, is clearly not a thriller and more of an emotional/psychological drama of people who are already mired by problems, having to deal with more.We see elaborate character building in the film and sometimes it is overdone, especially of characters who are not involved in the main plot. There were too many unanswered questions. Why didn't Stewart and his friends worry about their families back home with a killer loose? Why didn't one or two of them get back to the car and call the police? The film then drags on for a bit and ends with more questions. Why does the murderer chase Claire? Why does he watch the funeral? Beautiful symbolisms and the beautiful Australian landscape make for a haunting movie. Really good acting by all actors, more so by Gabriel Byrne who had me completely convinced that reporting that he'd found a dead body four days too late wasn't really their fault.The beautiful song sung by Susan's (Tatea Reilly) sister Ursula Yovich and her superb acting, bought a tear to my eye.Being a lover of stories with a certain amount of structure, Jindabyne left me unsatisfied.

One hopes one will not do anything truly evil in one's life; but supposing you (or someone you love) did something not exactly evil, but inexcusable - and was found out. This is the premise of Jinbadyne, and we see how the fall out of such a happening in an Australian community weakens already frail relationships and exposing tensions which are founded on a racism that, however unpleasant, is based (in both directions) on an irreconcilable sense of identity. You realise this film is good when its protagonists deliver stunning lines that seem totally natural, because you believe in their characters; also in the subtle way it works as a coolly unnerving thriller: this element of the movie is mostly played down against the personal drama so that when it is occasionally allowed to surface, it really shocks. That the villain of the piece is a sort of small town hero adds to the poignancy. If I was to call this film thoughtful, this might be a disservice: not because it isn't, but because reality bites harder than fantasy, and this is a gripping story as well as a human one.