brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Blistering performances.

This film came as a surprise. I'd never heard of it before it was being shown late night here, and what I found was an engaging and disturbing film. I was engrossed.Based in a small town in the Australian outback, we have our lead detective single-minded investigating the disturbing murder of a young woman. Despite all the obstacles being thrown in his way, our lead is lead by a level of morality that seems to be missing from everyone else.The story is really good, and encompasses police corruption, ethnicity, self-preservation and isolation. It can feel it has some homage to 'No Country to Old Men' but it's still very different.The cinematography is sumptuous, and the acting is wonderful. Worth watching alone for this.It's a dark tale which is very worthy of viewing.

Why was I immediately sold on this movie? Within minutes I was hooked, and stayed with it 100% right through. That, in my case, is an immediate plus point for any movie.So how did it get me? I guess because it struck me as believable - the characters, the places, the story. Having visited the edge of the Auz outback I fully related to the backgrounds and the characters. The texture and feel of the presentation struck me as the genuine article. I have said it before about top quality film directing - that the feel was more like a documentary with real people and not actors.The acting was excellent but not of a fine silken quality or in any way slick. Rather the characters were raw and gritty, which could explain some review comments suggesting wooden or poor acting.This movie felt like a fly on the wall view of the hard side of a tough life in the Australian outback, replete with huge social problems, racism, and defeated and depressed people tying to survive while drugs and crime were eating into the life of the area.As depressing as was the setting, funny enough, I was not in the least depressed by the movie. There was a strong ethical line and I felt throughout that good would make it in the end.This is a great movie without any big name actors, without fancy settings, without a great musical score, without great special effects, without bells or whistles of any description. It is totally minimalist art. It's greatness is in the excellent direction, the acting, the cinematography, and a decent enough plot.

There is a class of film lovers who want to concede and live the eras of film making. Even though they were born in situations separated by time and space, they feel nostalgic about the early and subsequent industrial era diffusion (and its effects) brought in thru history, literature and cinema: The periods when homesteaders entered Dodge City, when London started getting crawled in by villagers or when families from a big city relocated to newly planned adjoining suburbs. If you identify with this description, you've probably got a treasure here.19th century Wild West lives in 21st century Bush! Not that it's uncreative; the history of filmography is etched in this 2 hours intelligent crime story. Referencing the classic westerns to earliest neo-noirs to recent crime features, the unknown director theoretically beautifies the Film making.The score is as quiet as the life itself while as intriguing as its characters. Unbelievably well photographed! Aerial shots and silhouette wides suit the mood of terror in an uncivil, dusty town with principal actors having a gem to showcase their worth. Screen writing concerned me a bit but that doesn't stop me from saying that if given a worldwide interest, I'm sure Australia will unbland the perceptions of Australianness and allow us into new realms of cinematic and cultural entertainment.

Mystery Road (2013) is a film about a small town cop whose investigation into the death of a young prostitute leads him into a dark underworld of meth producers and pimps. While director Ivan Sen tries to effect a dark and somber mood, it's kind of hard to take the whole thing seriously when some of its locales have names like "Slaughter Hill" and "Massacre Creek". Even the naming of the titular road seems to serve no purpose other than to remind us of the genre of film we're watching. Which is to say nothing of the film's weird affinity for aerial tracking shots of "Detective Jay Swan" driving from one dilapidated country shack to another. Mystery Road scores some points for its visual association of a rustic countryside setting with bleakness and decay (see also, True Detective and Breaking Bad), but everything from Aaron Pederson's flat performance to the overlong running time make this a B-list thriller at best. If the film has a saving grace, it's the deftly choreographed shootout scene at the end.