Red Hill

Shane Cooper (Ryan Kwanten) is the new cop in Red Hill, a small township in the Victorian high country. His new chief is Old Bill (Steve Bisley), the big man in charge of town and a mean cold-blooded bull with hard, conservative values. Old Bill takes an instant dislike to Shane and his cityfolk ways, and Shane's liberal views put him automatically in opposition to Bill. Shane's first day in Red Hill is just about to get a lot harder than that though as news breaks that Jimmy Conway (Tommy Lewis), an escaped Aboriginal prisoner and convincted murderer, is on his way back to Red Hill to take revenge on the township and it's polive. The town goes into lockdown, with Bill rounding up a gang of vigilantes to help him take Jimmy down.

First of all, this film is tight. It's economically constructed so that there's not a wasted line or look for it's all too brief 90-odd minutes. It doesn't take long to kick in to the main storyline and once it puts the screws on it doesn't let up until the final few minutes. I've heard about some viewers getting hung up on technical inaccuracies in regards to firearms and Australian small-town police stations, but to do this is to really miss the point of the movie... it's a western, it's not supposed to be realistic, it's meant to be mythic. Red Hill takes enough American western tropes to be recognisable as part of the western genre, but it also has a firm Australian context to justify it's setting. It's a great film in terms of being both a western and an Australian film. And whilst it has something interesting and genuine to say about society and history (like all great westerns) it doesn't do so at the expense of being a rip-roaring crime film full of blood, vengeance and hard injustice.

Tommy Lewis shines in a worldess role as Jimmy, a man whose facial scarring can be seen as a metaphor for the Aboriginal people. Most of the time he just looks on impassively like a walking accusation, the viewer filling in the backstory by bringing their own cultural assumptions to interpret his violent actions as he doles out unflinching revenge. His backstory is only given to us in short detail at first, we know there has to be more to the story even if Jimmy himself remains so stoic and tightlipped. For most of the film words simply can't express the injustice, and this further reinforces Jimmy as a walking larger-than-life metaphor. The contrast between Jimmy, with his half-burned face and shabby clothes, and the plastic traditional Aborigine in the window of the local information centre is deliberate and boldly stated... this is a once proud people with a rich culture and history now repackaged for white tourism and reduced to rogue justice.

Near the film's beginning we glimpse a town meeting where the townspeople express their fear at the very real danger of losing their identity in the face of big business and privatisation. In the western tradition, these are pioneers about to be swept away by modernisation - an insular and fiercely protective people who will do anything to preserve their way of life. Old Bill is the town patriarch, the Aborigines are the dwindling native americans who have an uneasy relationship with the whites, and Shane is the outsider with the power to put things right. Red Hill isn't a big budget action bonanza, but it gets everything right and is certainly full of thrills. My only criticisms would have to be the silly panther subplot (this already tight film might've been that little bit tighter without such unneccessary quirk and symbolism) and the capture-escape routines that Shane goes through in order to stall the film's inevitable showdown. But don't let that put you off, this is easily the best western ever made in Australia.

DIRECTOR: Patrick Hughes
WRITER/SOURCE: Patrick Hughes
KEY ACTORS: Ryan Kwanten, Steve Bisley, Tommy Lewis, Claire van der Boom, Christopher Davis, Kevin Harrington

RELATED TEXTS:
- Two classic westerns immediately come to mind, Bad Day at Black Rock (outsider faces off against racist township in contempoary western setting) and The Ox-Blow Incident (mob justice/injustice).
- Tommy Lewis is best known for his breakout role in the classic and confronting Australian film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. I don't think it's a coincidence that his character in Red Hill is also named Jimmy.
- There aren't a great deal of Australian westerns, but we've had a stab at making a few in our time. Some notable ones are... Mad Dog Morgan, The Man From Snowy River, The Man From Snowy River II, Ned Kelly, The Tracker and The Proposition.