Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

I love the old P. Weir films, this and Picnick are my favorites and absolute masterpieces I carry in my heart + have seen many times without loosing fascination. Many have described this story-line , so I won't....Just saying great, great, great film. Good good good good good ( I must fill 5 lines......but words are useless...) good good good.

Although I've long been a fan of Peter Weir, I hadn't watched any of his Australian movies until I watched The Last Wave. And it was a pleasant, unpredictable surprise.Richard Chamberlain plays David, a lawyer invited to defend five aborigines charged with murdering another Aborigine. For David's peers it's a clear case of drunken disorder and they think they should plead guilty and serve a quick sentence. But David believes there's a mystery underneath the murder, linked to tribal rituals. As his investigation proceeds he learns not only things about his clients but about himself too.To reveal more would be to spoil one of the strangest movies I've ever seen. I can only say that this movie goes in directions that no one will be expecting.There are many elements that make this a fascinating movie: Chamberlain's acting, for instance; but also the performances by David Gulpilil, who plays a young aborigine who introduces David into tribal mysteries; and Nandjiwarra Amagula, who plays an old aborigine who's a spiritual guide. The relationships between these three characters make the heart of the movie.But there's also the way Weir suggests the supernatural in the movie. David has dreams that warn him of the future. Australia is undergoing awful weather, with storms, hail falling and even a mysterious black rain that may be nothing more than pollution. But it's also related to the case David is defending. How it's related is one of the great revelations of the movie. Out of little events Weir manages to create an atmosphere of dread and oppression, suggesting future horrors without really showing anything.Charles Wain's score is fantastic, especially the use of the didgeridoo. The photography is also quite good. Russell Boyd, Weir's longtime DP who won an Oscar in 2004 for Master and Commander, depicts a dark, creepy world full of mystery.I also find it remarkable that for a movie centered on aborigines, it doesn't turn into an indictment against white culture or into a sappy celebration of the their traditions, like Dances With Wolves or The Last Samurai. This movie is too clever to be that simplistic.Sometimes it can be frustrating, and it may upset viewers who expect to finish a movie with everything making sense; but for those who don't mind some strangeness or ambiguity, The Last Wave is a great movie to watch.

This is one of those movies that makes you chuckle at the end because it did not answer any of the questions it sparked along the way. Yet, the more I think or talk about it the deeper it seems. The best supernatural thrillers are those that end with a sense of closure coupled with ambiguity. To me this is more "real" than a film that pretends to have all of the answers. No matter how enmeshed one becomes in the supernatural there will always remain a sense of mystery. Our natural minds just cannot completely encompass the purpose and mechanics of the supernatural world. More than once the Old Testament says of God "His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thinking." In the New Testament Paul wrote that at best we "see through a glass darkly". I believe this sums up the inherent futility of man's attempt to impose his logic on a dimension that has it's own separate logic. It's a language we cannot speak, spoken on a frequency we can rarely and barely discern if ever at all.Weir succeeds in conveying a sense of consciousness in nature phenomenon. In fact the weather appears to be separate character with it's own distinct visage and voice. This is the films greatest achievement.The film sets everything up well but ultimately fails to engage us plot. At pivotal moments the key characters motivations are not clear at all. Why does Chamberlains character do that at the end? Why is this place or that thing so special? I really didn't understand the most fundamental plot device until I watched the interview included in the extras. A great film doesn't require Cliff's notes.I think Weir was trying to give us sense of the supernatural and our relation to it by "implying" it through sounds and images. That's good. It works. This is "real". The problem is that the plot is also merely implied. While I was enticed to watch until the end and pleased with the mood of the film in the end there was no payoff.

THE LAST WAVE is never going to win over the mainstream audience. It is a slow-moving but fascinating film for those who are willing to go along with it. An Australian properties lawyer is asked to take on the case of five aborigines accused in the murder of one of their own. All sorts of portents and omens soon pop up, as the man's death involves a tribal issue that was not meant for white man's court, and pretty soon the lawyer is having trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy. It looks like the end of the world may be at hand, and he and the aborigines may know this but no one else does. Richard Chamberlain as the lawyer is at his peak here. David Guptil, a familiar face from several other Australian flicks and a decent actor, is one of the five aborigines on trial. THE LAST WAVE is simply not for everyone, anymore than is MAGNOLIA (both happen to have strange things falling from the sky). Check it out on a slow Saturday night.