"Come and have a drink, mate."
I definitely could have done without the footage of the kangaroos being brutally slaughtered even with the disclaimer (seriously, beware folks), but director Ted Kotcheff creates a quite an existential nightmare with this teacher finding himself trapped in a rural town, and also ruthlessly satirizes Australian bro culture. The moronic gambling, excessive drinking, and gleeful violence are all served up extra dark, and between that and the oppressive sense of heat and dirt, you may feel like you need a shower afterwards. Loved the cinematography, soundtrack, and foreboding feeling this one gave me - like we're all trapped in a little town populated by macho lunatics, no matter how much more "civilized" we think we may be. Maybe that's summarized best by this line from Donald Pleasance, spoken while two of his friends beat the hell out of each other for fun in the background, destroying the roadside bar in the process:
"The aim of what you call civilization is a man in a smoking jacket, whiskey and soda, pressing a bottom... button, to destroy a planet a billion miles away, and kill a billion people he's never seen."
I definitely could have done without the footage of the kangaroos being brutally slaughtered even with the disclaimer (seriously, beware folks), but director Ted Kotcheff creates a quite an existential nightmare with this teacher finding himself trapped in a rural town, and also ruthlessly satirizes Australian bro culture. The moronic gambling, excessive drinking, and gleeful violence are all served up extra dark, and between that and the oppressive sense of heat and dirt, you may feel like you need a shower afterwards. Loved the cinematography, soundtrack, and foreboding feeling this one gave me - like we're all trapped in a little town populated by macho lunatics, no matter how much more "civilized" we think we may be. Maybe that's summarized best by this line from Donald Pleasance, spoken while two of his friends beat the hell out of each other for fun in the background, destroying the roadside bar in the process:
"The aim of what you call civilization is a man in a smoking jacket, whiskey and soda, pressing a bottom... button, to destroy a planet a billion miles away, and kill a billion people he's never seen."