The other type of Australian films being made are genre pictures, which Australia has always been good at, but much like the American B-Movie scene, they always fall into predictable plotlines, frequently delving into tropes and feeling like low budget rip-offs of successful American movies. The other film is Snowtown, which showed enough promise from director Justin Kurzel for American producers to allow him to make Macbeth, one of the hotly anticipated films for the upcoming awards season.Īpart from that, many Australian films other cling to their Australian roots too closely whilst not saying anything new and due to the sheer amount of quantity of these films, are widely dismissed by Australian audiences, being left to niche audiences who don’t provide enough money to have these films make financial sense. The only significant films of the past 10 years to really make any impact are David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom, which reminded audiences and filmmakers of the acting talents of Ben Mendelsohn and Jacki Weaver, who have become international stars. For the past decade, Australia has lacked films that have managed to cross international borders and bring new talent to life, which is a process which used to happen back in the day, from George Miller to Phillip Noyce. Without the three-way punch of more panache, more Pegg, and more panoramic views of Australian landscapes, Three Times stops short of being a killer time.Kill Me Three Timesis a film which is the right step forward for Australian cinema, done in the worst way possible. That's part of the film's design, but without much incentive to follow the mystery, it's a design that can't quite work. What's more, the story itself is frustrating, taking forever to communicate the stakes. The pacing is way off: there's endless, needless footage of characters getting into cars and driving to new locations. But the film isn't enough fun to recommend on its own terms, with its sloppy construction and so little in the way of stylistic flourishes. Kill Me Three Times has elements that would seem to peg it (no pun intended) as a fun genre exercise, including pitch-black humor, corrupt law enforcement, a love of rural settings, and a desperately bloody climax. (The actor's Britishness, by the way, is explained by calling him a "tourist," despite the fact that he heads what appears to be a thriving private-eye business.) Pegg is surrounded by a cast of mostly Aussie ringers, including Palmer and Luke Hemsworth (brother to Chris and Liam), who can't seem to decide how seriously to take their roles. He shows off his natural charisma while doing something as simple as playing with cigarettes. Pegg, who begins the movie as the dispassionate observer and audience surrogate before taking center stage, is fun to watch even when he isn't given much to work with. Some of the interconnections between characters feel superfluous, including the way Braga's young woman, at a moment of extreme distress, winds up at the dentist's office in the first place. The hitman lies dying at a beach house in the opening scene, before flashing back to show how he entered the lives of two financially misbehaving dentists (Teresa Palmer and Sullivan Stapleton), an alcoholic rage-prone bar owner (Callan Mulvey), and the bar owner's wife (Alice Braga) who becomes everyone's primary target. In between, there is the story, which involves a seedy hitman played by cult movie hero Simon Pegg, clad in leather jacket and horseshoe mustache. The movie's chief advantage is that it was filmed along the coast of Western Australia, allowing ample opportunities to admire the scenery with its jagged cliffs and lush wilderness. When all is said and done, the technique feels a bit desperate. Sadly, Kill Me Three Times is the former more than the latter case. Jackson's concluding speech in Pulp Fiction resonates more strongly because we already know, chronologically, what happens next). The danger is that such a device will feel like an artificial means of stretching out a thin story, instead of a mechanism that complements it in a satisfying way (example: Samuel L. This twisty structure is the movie's hook, though after two decades of similar narrative games in cinema, the gambit feels overly familiar.
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