Back of Beyond (1995)

Sand skidding across the blacktop.  Heat waves shimmering the distant scenery.  Even a tumbleweed.  It's a stupid director who doesn't exploit the atmospheric properties of a desert setting, though an even smarter director knows not to overdo it and rely on the setting to cover failings of story and dialog.  Director Michael Robertson lies somewhere in between, in a movie (you can order the best movie review or film essays in our essay writing service) that boasts adequate performances and a thoughtful, sometimes over-polished script, amid the crags and dust of uninhabited Australia.

Tom (Paul Mercurio) and his sister Susan run an under-patronized restaurant and garage in the "back of Beyond," otherwise known as "B.F.E."  His heart's not really in it, though she tries to make it a quality establishment.  Teasing her about not being "fun" anymore, he takes her out on a ride on his motorcycle -- which ends abruptly.

Twelve years later, Tom (completely unchanged, right down to his haircut) is still at the now-closed establishment, communing occasionally with his sister's ghost and staring pensively at his dusty, wrecked bike.

Into his life comes a trio of strangers:  Bleached-blond jewel thief Connor (Colin Friels, known from Darkman and Dark City), his reluctant girl Charlie (Dee Smart), and ineffectual pretty boy Nick (John Polson of M:I2), whose father helped Connor set up their operation: a diamond theft from which they are currently escaping, taking their Jaguar across the back country to the coast when they bust their oil pan.  Charlie sets out to find help, and stumbles into the garage, a dehydrated wreck.  Tom of course rehydrates her, and that starts the inevitable Florence Nightingale romance.

The rest of the movie concentrates on both the outer conflict (the psychopathically-possessive Connor jealously guarding his female) and the inner conflict (Tom coming to terms with his guilt and embracing life again), punctuated by a couple of other characters who stumble through: Lucky Dave, a superstar singer who holds forth impromptu sermons on following your bliss; and old Gilbert, the aborigine taking his city-raised grandchildren out to some of his people's traditional places.

Holding it all together, of course, is the desert, that big metaphor for loneliness and isloation which also happens to be a literal expanse of nothing but dirt.  But even such a powerful image, used as well as any Southern Utah setting in an American-made Western, can't carry the movie.

Obviously, the movie is a love story, a crime story, a ghost story, and a personal-journey story, but it is not a blend of these; rather, each takes turns in the limelight, with the result that the narrative seems to spend much of its time changing gears.  The dialog is usually well-crafted, but that only calls more attention to the odd clunker line.  And images which would be powerful in moderation (the motorcycle, Susan's unfinished To-Do list, certain refrains in dialogue) become leaden as they're repeated.

The performance range from true (Colin Friels conveys well the quiet gentility of the self-obsessed bastard who's learned how to manipulate professionally) to lifeless (I guess there wasn't a large audition pool from which to case Gilbert's two grandchildren) to simply adequate (Paul Mercurio is fine when playing Tom as a desperately lonely man afraid of opening up, but loses credibility when later trying to show any emotive range).

The old jukebox in the corner relies far too heavily on American "classics" (Dobie Gray's "Drift Away" being the most prominent); the final scene and closing credits are accompanied by The Cranberries' "Dreams."  Given that the desert setting was given so much of a burden in keeping the story together, it seems a double shame that the perfect complement -- a good soundtrack -- is utterly absent.

Not a bad film, certainly, but intelligent films which fall short somehow seem more pitiful than brainless ones.