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Australia 2014
Directed by
Simon J. Dutton
90 minutes
Rated R

Reviewed by
Sharon Hurst
1 stars

Day Of The Broken

Synopsis: A mother, Charlotte, (Justina Noble), is dealing with the absolute worst scenario – both her children have been kidnapped and sexually abused. One is dead and the other scarred, physically and psychologically for life. Police have got nowhere and desperate for retribution, Charlotte reluctantly contacts Francis (Simon J. Dutton), brother of her late husband. Francis goes on the trail of the only living perpetrator through the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda, home to absolute bottom-of-the-barrel scumbags.

It is not unusual for first-time Aussie film-makers to serve up a genre piece that is somewhere between thriller and horror. Presumably they watch such fare at home and think " I could do that". But whilst I give full credit to anyone who gets a film up and running, I cannot, on a number of counts, recommend this one.

Where do I begin? All successful films need to start with a good script, and far more discerning eyes than writer/director Dutton’s should have given this the ten-times over before any camera rolled. Within the first 10 or so minutes we are bombarded with a multitude of characters with not one being given enough time to develop before the next emerges. Even by the film’s conclusion, in which a few seem to be relevant, I still couldn’t see why many of them were there.

The main characters seem to be Bob, a scab-riddled junkie (Greg Fleet), Terry (Peter Finlay) and his side-kick (Michael Trewarne), a pair of no-good petty crims who hang around drains tying people up and trying to philosophize in a Pulp Fiction manner, a patient (Lawrence Mooney) and his psychiatrist, some sad and sorry hooker called Hope (Joecelyn Tauta Towers) and a couple of other guys who I couldn’t even fathom whether they were cops or crims. Even Kostas Kilias makes an appearance as, Lord knows why, some deviant discussing bestiality and other depravities. Why the comedians Mooney and Fleet signed on for this I don’t know, though they both proved better actors than I would have imagined, with Fleet certainly capturing the nihilism of his repellent character.

Aside from the near incomprehensibility of the plot, there is the dialogue. Yes, we know that bottom-feeding scum swear like how's your father, but learning lines for this film must have been a walk in the park – just learn the two most used four-letter words and you’ve got half your lines down pat! Then there is the actual subject matter. Horrific subject matter does not necessarily put me off a film but Day Of The Broken is an indulgence in the pornography of violence, not a deconstruction of it.  

On the positive side, the score by Norwegian musos, Deaf Centre, is a strong one, and the look of the film, shot crisply and competently in some of Melbourne’s recognisable locations, is quite professional.

The film’s publicity blurb, no doubt written by the film-makers themselves refers to “seven lost souls”, a “slow-burning 24 hours” and “pitch-black humour”. Maybe I’m missing something but I fail to see any of those epithets as applicable to this sadistic and nastily sensationalistic film, one which shows little regard for even the basic ingredients of sound story-telling.

 

 

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