Directed by
Scott Hicks
98 minutes
Rated M
Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
Freedom
There is little to recommend in this teen-oriented movie that starts off unremarkably and fairly soon loses all credibility, never to regain it.
Jon Blake plays Ron, a disaffected young man with a love of fast cars. He loses his apprenticeship job and drifts aimlessly around before stealing an old schoolfriend’s Porsche and living out his fanatasies of being a playboy secret agent. The initial phase of the film suggest that it is going to be a typical-enough story of aimless suburban youth with lots of Rebel Without A Cause-like activity.
Initially there is much dwelling on the alienating boredom and frustrating economic condition of Ron’s life as he looks for a job and wanders around car yards, while the radio or some jaunty 80s pop plays in the background. Once he steals the Porsche, however, film goes seriously awry. Blake in his first feature film role is not a particularly convincing actor and John Emery’s script is frankly awful. The result is that Ron, self-centered, deluded and dishonest, is not the sort of character anyone wants to identify with, let alone go along with on his brainless road trip. Matters are not helped when he teams up with Sally played by Jad Capelja, an actress who had shared the lead in Puberty Blues the previous year but has never made another film after this. Capelja is equally ineffective and Emery’s script, once again, does her no favours. Hicks manages to do nothing more than track the pair’s futile adventure as they high-tail it, Bonnie-and-Clyde-like, across the South Australian landscape pursued by incompetent police to a predictable denouement. There is evident potential here but Hicks comes nowhere close to realizing it. Who would imagine from this inauspicious start that he would go on to be the Oscar-nominated (although equally heavy-handed) director of Shine?
BTW: Jon Blake was critically injured whilst driving home on December 1, 1986, after the final day's filming of The Lighthorsemen. He sustained severe brain injuries and in December, 1995, the New South Wales Supreme Court ruled that Blake should be compensated for the loss of potential earnings as a star in the United States. After taking evidence from actors, directors, and film critics who indicated his career could have been as big as Mel Gibson's, the court awarded him $32 million in damages. This was later reduced to $7 million after the defence appealed.
DVD Extras: Theatrical Trailer
Available from: Umbrella Entertainment
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