This is the 3rd Guy Pierce movie I have seen in as many months … and that’s not counting his appearance on the small screen this week in the new ‘Mildred Pierce.’ More important than the fact he is a busy working actor is the interesting choices he makes in the roles he accepts. Especially when they are in smaller budget Australian movies where he becomes an integral part of an ensemble piece than just another Hollywood Star carrying the movie.
This is one such case. A wee movie that some unknown reason is finding it tough to make it in onto screens in any country, yet it well deserves a decent audience. It is based on a true and very tragic story of a kidnapping and murder of a 15 year old in a small Australian town. The story unfolds in three different sections, which relate the events as seen by the girl, and then her parents, and then finally by the murderer. The distraught parents panic as the authorities refuse to treat the case as any more than just a runaway child, and so they start to do their own detective work to search for their daughter. The very last thing they ever expect to find is that she ends up dead at the hands of the very same girl who used to baby-sit the children before her psychotic problems got totally out of control.
That fact is apparent quite soon, as the focus and real tension of this thriller/drama is actually why and how the killer carried out the act, and how she uses her victim to try and achieve her own dreams. This is a very disturbing and discomforting story that slow unfolds in an almost understated way that is reflected in the quiet manner that Guy Pierce adopts playing the missing girls father.
By no means a perfect movie, but it does carry a certain punch with its choice cast. Miranda Otto as the mother, Sam Neil as the killer’s father, and an unknown Irish actress Ruth Bradley who scared the living daylights out of me with her (too) realistic portrayal of Caroline the loony murderer.
Definitely worth looking out for.
★★★★★★★
★★★★★★★
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