Strong and Moving!

Just what I expected

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

First, let me say that this review is based on the first three quarters of Red Hill only. I couldn't watch any more. I was forcing myself to laugh to stop myself from becoming so frustrated with this film.It's about an escaped convict who comes to an out-of-the-way Australian town to seek revenge on those who had him sent to prison originally. He kills them one by one. They, in turn, let him kill them one by one, on account of not being able to ever shoot him once, even if he's standing in front of them (I'm not lying - a guy, kneeling no more than a few feet away from the killer, fires at least five shots off and misses ever time - then, once he's run out of ammo, he gets killed). This then happens again and again. One dozy local fails to hit the killer when he clearly has a clear shot then, in turn, gets killed himself (my favourite being the local man on a rooftop, failing to kill the escapee with a sniper rifle from an elevated position, but managing to get himself shot instead).In fact, the nasty ol' killer kills everyone he meets, apart from the hero. He doesn't bother with him. He lets him live. Then, when their paths cross, he lets him live again. And again. And... I think this was when I turned it off.The story is wafer-thin, characters are only there to be killed and the 'action' scenes are just a man firing at the convict (and missing, obviously) then getting killed.Judging from other reviews, some people seemed to find this film 'tense' and 'atmospheric.' I guess every film can find its audience somewhere, but this one wasn't for me.http://thewrongtreemoviereviews.blogspot.co.uk/

To fully appreciate Red Hill, I think you need to be an Australian. Not that that means you won't enjoy it if you're not. Nonetheless, there is definitely an unmistakable 'difference' from your typical western genre thriller movie that can only really be attributed to the Australian psyche.Having so said, I agree with several other reviewers that Red Hill is well worth the watch. Ryan Kwanten played the part of Shane Cooper, the new-cop-in-town well - although I wondered how long he had been a cop in the city because he was a bit timid to start with even though he had a past incident that framed him as maybe too compassionate to be a hard- nosed law officer. He was clearly a human being who cared and also happened to be a cop! Steve Bisley was every bit the "this is MY town" local sheriff (except that, in this modern version, he's a police inspector who just thinks he's the Wyatt Earp of Red Hill) and plays the part brilliantly.Then there's the protagonist Jimmy Conway excellently played by Tommy Lewis, a Northern Territory Aboriginal from way back. What other reviewers have totally failed to understand is that Tommy plays Jimmy exactly as he would have been in real life - all action and no talk! The make-up crew did an excellent job on him too.The plot is a bit "Blue Heelerish" (for you non-Aussies, that was a very popular TV series set in much the same environment as Red Hill) except that likable Sergeant Tom Croydon was very different from Steve Bisley's Bill.I would have liked to see a bit more development of the wild animal side-plot which I feel was left a bit up in the air (maybe there's a sequel planned to deal with that). All-in-all, a good movie that was pretty true to form (given the true circumstances - which aren't revealed until the very end).

As a modern Western, a slight twist on the standard revenge flick and an old fashioned morality play, Red Hill is a nice little taste of Australian cinema goodness. Writer/director Patrick Hughes has penned an unsurprising but still involving story and backs it up with strong imagery of the vastness of nature and the cruelty of men. With a solid cast and just the right amount of violence to propel things along without overwhelming the narrative, this is a pretty entertaining flick. A sparsely drawn main character who seems more like a passive observer than a protagonist and probably underestimating how quickly most viewers will figure out its mystery are the only big flaws here but Red Hill avoids so many other of the standard pitfalls of this sort of thing that it feels refreshingly familiar instead of tiresomely repetitive.Shane Cooper(Ryan Kwanten) is a young constable starting his first day on his new assignment in the small, country town of Red Hill. He's got a pregnant wife (Claire van der Boom) at home and a hard charging inspector named Old Bill (Steve Bisley) who makes it clear that this is his town and Cooper's a relatively unwelcome guest. Everything changes, however, when convicted murderer Jimmy Conway (Tom E. Lewis) breaks out of prison and Cooper finds Bill and a collection of townsmen in a near panic at his prospective return. Cooper is the first one to encounter Conway, barely escapes with his life and spends most of the film trailing behind Conway on his path of death, slowly unraveling the real secret of Red Hill. Oh, and there's a panther that shows up.This motion picture is entirely about the conflict between Conway and the men of Red Hill. I would guess that Shane Cooper was injected into the script because of the supposed box office need for a young, attractive star but I don't think it was necessary. Ryan Kwanten does a good job on screen and there's a minor subplot with Shane and his wife but you could remove Shane, beef up the roles of Old Bill, Conway and the others and have a movie that was just as good, if not a little better. A bit better because without Shane, I suspect writer/director Hughes would have realized the mystery of Conway's revenge is too obvious and added a few more layers of subterfuge and misdirection to the plot. It does feel like Hughes came up with the story of Red Hill and only added in the "new guy in town" element later on to make it more commercially viable.I don't think he had to do that because Steve Bisley is crackerjack and the character of Jimmy Conway is intriguing in his stoic muteness. Watching Conway plow through the rest of Old Bill's posse until the two of them finally meet would have been more than enough to pull in the audience and keep them watching. No one besides Shane, Bill and Conway get enough time and space on screen to show much personality, but the tiny bit of depth and definition Hughes gives of a couple of other constables (Kevin Harrington and Richard Sutherland) is interesting enough that I kind of wish Shane didn't occupy so much of Red Hill.Hughes completely scores with is invocation of the wide open spaces of rural Australia. It gives an almost epic frame to this story of personal revenge, though Hughes doesn't appear to have a grasp on how slowly people actually move when they're on foot, particularly if they're seriously wounded. He does use distance to answer that age old question of this genre, namely "Why can't a bunch of guys manage to defend themselves against a single person?" The characters in Red Hill have so much ground to cover that splitting up into more easily killable numbers is perfectly logical, rather than stupidly cliché.If Shane Cooper had been more deeply woven into or totally removed from the plot, this might have been a very good movie. As it is, Red Hill remains a clear cut or two above average and well worth seeing.

Others have said this is a worthy western, but not great. I disagree. Tipping it's hat to any number of US westerns, it surpasses them on almost every level, introducing elements that have never been seen before in this type of movie, and approaching it in a different way.US westerns tell a story like they don't know we all guessed the whole story within the first few minutes, but here, the director has acknowledged we're not morons, and gently unravels the story in the most entertaining and engrossing way possible, building tension intelligently, with some additional breath-holding moments from a rather curious side plot which isn't overdone.Some truly tender moments are managed thoughtfully, with no sense of awkwardness, and are meaningful parts of the story rather than painfully tenuous attempts to show the softer side of the characters as one has come to expect from US westerns. Ryan Kwanten is excellent, but Tommy Lewis steals it with a truly chilling portrayal of the 'bad guy'. The use of aboriginal attifacts as the film closes is perhaps a little OTT, but could also be seen as poetic justice bearing in mind the cause of the trouble - and that's a hallmark of all good westerns after all. Steve Bisley always plays a believable part, but the interesting depth his character promises early on fizzles out a bit as the movie progresses and becomes rather two dimensional - but even that kinda fits.Beautifully filmed, there are some exceptional cinematic sequences that will stay with me a long while, and the sound effects are exciting without compromising realism.I loved it - an impressive first feature for writer/director Patrick Hughes, and I'll be eagerly awaiting his next.