The Rover (2014)
A beautifully filmed dystopian western drama set in the Australian outback ten years after a global economic collapse.
The story, which is slight to say the least, has drifter Guy Pearce on the trail of three thieves who stole his car during their getaway. Pearce meets up with the brother of one of the thieves (Robert Pattinson) who is badly injured and left for dead from a gun shot wound, takes Pattinson to a doctor who performs surgery on him then together Pearce and Pattinson set out the the gang's home.
One of those films where the look, feel and stylistics are more interesting than the plot itself which has been done so many times before. Both Pearce and Pattinson are very good, Pearce in particular has a 'don't f*ck with me' intensity that he carries through each and every scene making his every meeting with someone the feel of a confrontation giving the film a high level of tension throughout.
This aggravated tension helps the bleak nihilist tone which at times is unrelenting and often brutal but following a mesmerising first forty minutes it does lose it's way in what seems like scene after scene of mumbling drawl which brings an already glacially paced film to a halt before picking up again in the final twenty minutes.
The final scene tells you exactly why Pearce wanted his car back from the thieves even though there were working cars littering the lawless landscape. John Wick would definitely have done the same.
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