Prompted by some curiosity about what Nicolas Cage could do for ozploitation, how-bad-can-it-be and Jason Di Rosso's interview with the director, Irishman Lorcan Finnegan. He worked off a script by fellow Irishman Thomas Martin.
The template is Wake in Fright (1971) but less motivated. Cage arrives at the beach/bay of his youth only to find it has become locals-only to a clutch of neo-pagan menchildren who appropriate his surfboard. They write "sanctuary" on it and hang it above the door to their redoubt then claim it has been there for at least seven summers. Julian McMahon (offspring of Billy and Sonia McMahon) tries to locate his inner hardarse as the leader-guru. He spouts random platitudes (selected unoriginal cliches of toxic masculinity) mixed with degraded Christian tropes into a witless literalism that is supposed to degrade Cage's heavily financialised character into acceptance/acceptability/geekdom. A hobo living in a car! A handgun! — uncommon in Australia so it must go off. Some cute wildlife shots. All the blokes are childish and asinine and none of the actors come out looking good. The major flaw, edging out many others, is that it is never adequately established why Cage returns to the beach/bay after dropping his son off somewhere. Why does he never leave, even just to get some food or clothes? I was also waiting for Cage to go psycho but he never properly does. For all that they got the stakes right: Cage does it all for a house.
I can't see this film being made anywhere else but Australia; obviously it riffs on the Bra Boys and the (illegal/semi-formal) enclosure of the commons. That doesn't explain why Screenwest would fund it: why make your awesome beaches look so unfriendly? Is the great state of Western Australia full now, like Sydney was back in 2000? I guess they did also fund Last Train to Freo (2006) — this one should've been called Last Lexus to Margaret River.
Peter Sobczynski: two stars at Roger Ebert's venue, "resembl[es] a feature-length meme." Jamie Tram: the sermons repackage those of Fight Club. Glenn Kenny avoids assessment/judgement.
