I never knew that there were so many flies in Australia. THE PROPOSITION has a cast of millions, all of them insects. There isn't a scene where we don't see or hear a bevy of buzzing bugs. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get used to seeing Guy Pearce or Emily Watson acting completely nonchalant as a fly crawled around on their lips.
While John Hillcoat's film is about racism, fraternity, and justice, I found the flies more interesting. THE PROPOSITION is something of an Outback Horse Opera and plays like a good first act of a grand Spaghetti Western. Yet, first acts are typically a half hour long at most, not 114 minutes! In other words, the film started out just as it was ending, and it took far too long to get there. Everything should have been paired down into twenty-some minutes.
The plot of one brother (Guy Pearce as Charley Burns) sent to kill his mad dog (yet oddly philosophical) older brother (Danny Huston as Arthur Burns) to ensure that their youngest babe in the woods brother (Richard Wilson as Mikey Burns) will not be hanged on Christmas Day was stretched painfully thin. Even the subplot of lawman Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) trying to maintain law and order in a "savage land" as he's sandwiched between ignorant bureaucracy, brutality, and an imported sense of British Propriety is tenuous at best.
One of the largest problems with his "looks great, less filling" film stems from our inability to sympathize with Guy Pearce as our foil. He invites sympathy but acts like a somnambulist, simply traveling from one locale to another. Even when he's run through with a spear, he appears nonplussed.
Written and scored by Nick Cave, the music in the film adds to some of the tedium. We hear the same ten-note refrain repeated throughout the movie. There's one noisy bit on the soundtrack that works well and seems to signal that the film's finally getting into gear but, alas, it ends before it begins too.
While John Hillcoat's film is about racism, fraternity, and justice, I found the flies more interesting. THE PROPOSITION is something of an Outback Horse Opera and plays like a good first act of a grand Spaghetti Western. Yet, first acts are typically a half hour long at most, not 114 minutes! In other words, the film started out just as it was ending, and it took far too long to get there. Everything should have been paired down into twenty-some minutes.
The plot of one brother (Guy Pearce as Charley Burns) sent to kill his mad dog (yet oddly philosophical) older brother (Danny Huston as Arthur Burns) to ensure that their youngest babe in the woods brother (Richard Wilson as Mikey Burns) will not be hanged on Christmas Day was stretched painfully thin. Even the subplot of lawman Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) trying to maintain law and order in a "savage land" as he's sandwiched between ignorant bureaucracy, brutality, and an imported sense of British Propriety is tenuous at best.
One of the largest problems with his "looks great, less filling" film stems from our inability to sympathize with Guy Pearce as our foil. He invites sympathy but acts like a somnambulist, simply traveling from one locale to another. Even when he's run through with a spear, he appears nonplussed.
Written and scored by Nick Cave, the music in the film adds to some of the tedium. We hear the same ten-note refrain repeated throughout the movie. There's one noisy bit on the soundtrack that works well and seems to signal that the film's finally getting into gear but, alas, it ends before it begins too.