Cinequest spotlighted the contemporary murder mystery Mystery Road, set in the Australian outback. An indigenous detective returns to his small town to encounter racist co-workers, a drunk and shiftless ex-wife and a resentful teenage daughter. The daughter is a concern because her gal pals are starting to turn up murdered one by one. Mystery Road is a solid but unexceptional police procedural except for two things:
- the very strong lead performance by Aaron Pederson, who brings out the inner conflict within a guy who needed to leave his hometown and his marriage but is tormented by the consequences of those decisions; and
- the movie’s climactic gun battle between guys using hunting rifles through telescopic sights – a real show stopper .
Hugo Weaving chews up some scenery with a supporting role as a cop with ambiguous motivation. Weaving, with his supporting roles in The Matrix, V for Vendetta, Lord of the Rings, Transformers, etc., may be the world’s most financially successful character actor. I first saw Weaving in the 1991 Proof, the breakout film for then 26-year-old Russell Crowe. In Proof, Crowe plays a young buck who falls in with an eccentric blind man (Weaving) and an uncomfortably needy and manipulative woman (Genevieve Picot). Proof (available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from iTunes and Amazon) is an excellent and oft overlooked film. Mystery Road has its moments, too.