More Gulpilil completism: epic blozploitation, black magic voodoo! It's so strange to see him in the Sydney spots: the Rocks, Vaucluse, the park under the southern end of the bridge. Unfortunately he doesn't get to move in this, functioning merely as a 1976 urban clothes horse. Richard Chamberlain plays a moneyed-up corporate tax lawyer who drives a Volvo 264 (if I read it right) which looks essentially like a 240. He's American and his accent wanders periodically.
I did not understand the metaphysical mechanics, or much of anything really. The plot is incoherent; for instance, after "I don't do much criminal law" Chamberlain loses the murder case, guilty Gulpilil is somehow free to wander around and reveal all. This is well after we see him getting rather violently installed in a cell. The whole thing is shot like a horror movie. Perhaps it serves best as a reminder of a time of Tooths Lager, when the ambience of the old inner-city pubs drew both lawyers and crims to work from the front bar.
Again — ten years later — it strikes me that I haven't seen anything by Peter Weir I like.
Vincent Canby at the time. Luke Buckmaster in 2014.