Rent Goldstone (2016)

Slow-burn would-be thriller - Goldstone review by Alphaville

Slow moving, slow plotted story about an investigation into the trafficking of Asian women in an Australian desert small town. Everything is as pared back as the landscape. It’s s-l-o-w. Even the score, minimal at best, is built around a plaintive piano, as is often the case in films enamoured of their own self-importance. Don’t be fooled by the DVD cover picture of our two cop heroes firing rifles. There’s only some brief out-of-character action at the climax.

The flat desert landscape is lovingly photographed, the two leads are good and there’s the kernel of a good story here, but it’s a long haul to the end credits. Shouldn’t a ‘mystery thriller’, as the writer/director calls it on the DVD extras, be dramatic?

Aussie Noir - Goldstone review by Steve

This is a sequel to Mystery Road (2013), and both are apparently from a wave of post-millennial Australian crime pictures collectively called Outback Noir. Which seems to be inspired by Scandi-noir, but this one has an additional racial aspect. Aaron Pedersen stars as a cop locked into a boozy downward spiral after a messy divorce.

If this is a cliché, then the difference is he's an Aboriginal detective, which adds another level of prickliness to the already cantankerous rural rednecks. He's on the trail of a missing Chinese woman trafficked into prostitution for a mining company which is beyond the usual reach of the law. Which is the reason for all the noirish pessimism.

The story is compelling, even though the resolution depends on unscrupulous scumbags developing a conscious, which surely happens more in fiction than real life. But it hits several worthy political targets, including the corrupt dominion of big business. Because once the settlers took this land off the indigenous people...

...And now the corporations have stolen it from everyone. The performances are strong with Jackie Weaver contributing another of her psycho-wrong 'uns. It's just one more laconic, low budget neo-noir; but better than most and well directed by Ivan Sen, whose use of the widescreen format is ideal for the lonely desert panorama.