Cut Snake

Synopsis: In the mid 70s, dream boyfriend Merv Farrell (Alex Russell) is all set to marry his sweetheart , Paula (Jessica de Gouw) when he’s visited by Pommie (Sullivan Stapleton), an old mate recently released from prison.  But far from being a happy reunion, the reappearance begins to reveal the secrets that ‘Sparra’, as Pommie calls him, has been hiding from is fiancé and threatens to destroy his hopes for happiness and a new life.

The gritty crime drama is somewhat of a departure for director, Tony Ayres, who is better known for films like Walking on Water (2002) and The Home Song Stories (2010). Nevertheless a little of the sensibility of those earlier films seeps into some of the more interesting character relationships that lie beneath the crime elements of this dark story, even if that doesn’t sustain the film all the way to the end.

Most notable in this small cast is Stapleton who, with the exception of his role in 2010’s Animal Kingdom is probably more familiar to audiences in high testosterone action driven roles such as 300:Rise of an Empire or the television series Strikeback. Here, though, he finds a vulnerability to the character of Pommie that elevates him beyond the two dimensional, stock standard fare of the charming but psychotic and violent crim that often populates these kinds of films.  It’s the strongest element of a film that, for a good part of its story, is engaging and unsettling. Sadly, though, the depth of character found in Pommie doesn’t extend to the rest of the of the cast and, in the latter stages the subtler elements give way to a more familiar cops-and-robbers style of pursuit by a very archetypal pair of thuggish detectives and the inevitable highly charged shootout.

The excellent 70s production design from Josephine Ford and her team vividly captures a period that for many of us is within living memory, but also sets the story in what feels like a more dangerous time when the absence of CCTV, mobile phones and computer analysis enables acts of violence and mayhem the like of those perpetrated by Pommie to occur without the level of surveillance and tracking that we’re used to today.

It’s a shame that this film doesn’t deliver on its early promise. For a while there the unexpected relationship between Pommie and Sparra (which feels reminiscent of the 2010 kidnap thriller, The Disappearance of Alice Creed), had the potential to steer the story on a far more interesting and complex journey thanultimately it takes us on.

 

 

Want more about this film?

    

Want something different?