Amateur movie with Big budget

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

It's the late 1800s, and Matthew Quigley is looking for excitement and finds it in a job down under, in Australia. Starring Tom Selleck as Quigley, he brings the American West to the outback.Along the way, he meets Crazy Cora, played by Laura San Giacomo (later famous for Just Shoot Me with David Spade), a woman who mistakes him for her husband. Also, Alan Rickman stars as the unethical Aussie rancher, Elliot Marston, who hires, then quickly fires Quigley.The story was great, as well as the acting from Selleck and Rickman. Also, great direction from Simon Wincer (of Lonesome Dove fame). Truly a wonderful film for fans of Selleck or westerns.

Magnum is hired from America by an Australian rancher so he can shoot aborigines at a distance. He takes exception to this, so the rancher tries to kill him for refusing, and Quigley escapes into the bush with a woman who calls him Roy and are helped by aborigines. Quigley returns the help, before heading back to the ranch.....From the sound of the title, you would think that the makers of this movie were hoping for some sort of franchise opener, and although the film does have the odd flash of genius, it's just overlong, and very dull in places.Selleck is as good as he ever is, and one thinks that this should have been his Indiana Jones, Quigley does have all the traits, but a few more quips from the titular character wouldn't have hurt the movie.Rickman steals the film from everybody though, made between Die Hard and Robin Hood: POT, this just goes to show what an impressive screen presence he is.Australia is wonderful to look at though, but as already stated, it's just a tad too long

Mainstream media will tell you that they don't really make westerns anymore but this is not true. Sometimes they make em look like something else. For example, Joss Whedon's Serendipity, an astonishing sci-fi film, and considered a true "space western." And then there is this wonderful little delicacy of a film, a western that takes place in, who would believe, Australia, and somehow pits a real down-on-his-luck American cowboy against a wannabee station (ranch) owner with the moral code of a junkyard dog. When a film is really really really superb, a one of a kind, I am reluctant to give too much away (spoilers or no) for fear of depriving a future viewer just one moment of pleasure from the experience. So I will say this -- acting is awesome. Selleck was just beginning the transition from the boisterous TV character he was known for, to the quieter thoughtful type he would later portray in TV movies. Brilliant, engaging, fun. Rickman practically invented playing bad guys (see Die Hard) and San Giacomo, no spring chicken here, has to provide the romantic interest but, because of the story, is given only a few lines of dialogue at most to work with. And whatta tale. In my other reviews I have emphasized the importance of staging these stories the way you would build a wedding cake, one layer at a time. And the story is perfection. It builds and builds and builds. In the best Jimmy Stewart tradition, Selleck keeps trying to avoid trouble, and only gets in deeper. The ending, the showdown, is superb and also dripping in irony. A vastly under-rated film, and a must see.

The sad thing about Quigley Down Under is that had this been done thirty years earlier the film would have warranted a major release the way a John Wayne or a James Stewart western would have had. Personally when I look at Tom Selleck and the way he plays the title character, I think James Garner. Selleck plays Matthew Quigley in the same dry, laconic manner that Garner patented.This western is about as southwest as you can get without dealing with penguins and icebergs. Selleck has come to western Australia in answer to an advertisement by a local rancher requiring a skilled marksman with a rifle. He takes the three month voyage from San Francisco and arrives at Alan Rickman's local Ponderosa. Remember this is Australia, a place settled by convict labor. On Rickman's spread it's mostly Scotch and Irish. But Rickman's problem isn't with them, it's with the aborigines.Which brings us to why he wants Selleck's services with a long rifle. Essentially he wants Selleck to hunt them down and kill them at a distance, a bit of ethnic cleansing. Fighting Indians was up close and personal at times. But just shooting people down like game, rubs Selleck the wrong way. He tells Rickman no with vigor. And that vigorous no gets Selleck and Laura San Giacomo a woman not playing with a full deck beaten up and thrown out in the outback with no means of survival. Of course they survive and we learn a lot about San Giacomo. The reason for her insanity, it's more of a defense mechanism to keep out the world, because she's done something terrible that her conscience won't leave alone. It's a beautiful performance, probably the acting highlight of Quigley Down Under.Of course there's plenty of action to satisfy any western fan on any continent. Alan Rickman is an especially loathsome villain, he makes his Sheriff of Nottingham in Kevin Costner's Robin Hood film look like a Girl Scout.And the aborigines do learn to appreciate Selleck and the payback he exacts. They come through for him at critical times in the film.Tom Selleck is a perfectly cast western hero, the kind I used to spend Saturday afternoon's watching.