'Generic' WA film lacks punch

FILM
Son of a Gun (MA15+)
2.5 stars
Ewan McGregor, Brenton Thwaites
DIRECTOR JULIUS AVERY
REVIEW MARK NAGLAZAS

During the recent CinefestOZ, where the Goldfields-set heist flick Son of a Gun competed for the Busselton-based festival's inaugural Film Prize, the film's writer-director Julius Avery talked at length about his early years growing up in Pemberton and how he fell under the spell of a very bad man.

This life-changing experience, explained Avery, was the inspiration for his debut feature Son of a Gun, which has been keenly anticipated since the Victorian College of the Arts graduate won the Jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival with the short Jerrycan (he also co-wrote another short that competed in Cannes, fellow West Australian Michael Spiccia's Yardbird).

Infusing biography into a crime thriller is a fine idea as it can transform an emotionally empty genre exercise into something real and relatable. It's why the gangster epics of Italian-American maestro Martin Scorsese are distinguished from their myriad inferior imitations.

However, somewhere between conjuring the wonderfully evocative title and the finished film the dangerous, shifting master- mentor relationship he'd been describing got lost in a hail of bullets, with Avery clearly more interested in paying homage to his cinematic father-figure Michael Mann than making good on his premise.

The result is a slick, fast-moving, occasionally exciting but thoroughly generic, heist thriller in which anything distinctive, including the WA locations, is all but erased in pursuit of a bogus internationalism.

The best section of Son of a Gun - best because it is gritty and grounded and doesn't rely as heavily on Hollywood formula - is the opening 20 minutes in which a canny young prison inmate named J.R. (Brenton Thwaites) works out that the only way of surviving is to get up close and personal with the notorious hard man and chess fanatic Brendan Lynch (Ewan McGregor).

It's a dangerous game played by J.R. but the only way he will avoid being made the bitch of a group of muscle-bound monsters with a taste for fresh meat (the scenes of another young inmate being raped and tossed aside by thugs are confronting but well done).

In exchange for protection the newly released J.R. must help break out Lynch and his gang, which he does by hijacking a tourist helicopter, landing it in the prison courtyard and spraying the guards with bullets (from here Son of a Gun slips into the groove of a more conventional action movie).

Once on the outside Lynch is persuaded by a Russian mob boss named Sam (Jacek Koman) to steal several bars of gold bullion from a mine in Kalgoorlie, a hastily organised scheme which goes south, culminating in a wild shoot- out directly inspired by Mann's gangster masterpiece Heat (it's not hard to guess which film the young Avery was blissing out over in 1995).

Of course, the sinister Sam double-crosses Lynch and he, J.R. and a Russian girl coerced into serving the gangsters and with whom the reckless youngster has fallen in love (Swedish actress Alicia Vikander) all head to Melbourne to save their necks and have a second shot at the bullion.

While Son of a Gun is never dull the core relationship between Lynch and J.R. quickly evaporates as Avery moves the emotional focus of the film to the young couple, which is sweet and sexy but not nearly as interesting as the original idea of a naif falling under the spell of an older man who's both charismatic and has values - we see him dispense with a gang member when he finds out he's a rapist - yet ultimately is concerned only with himself.

This failure to zero in on the Lynch/J.R. relationship is a shame because the role of the bad father- figure is perfect for McGregor, who has charm to burn but a steeliness that comes from his Scottish heritage and his off-screen motorcycle exploits.

He brings natural charisma to Son of a Gun but his part amounts to little.

My other major disappointment with Son of a Gun is its nutty sense of place. Avery says he was keen to work back in his home State because of its special feel but scrambles the geography so wildly and purposelessly that I am not sure why he bothered to come home at all.

Instead of using the time taken to travel from Perth to the Goldfields for atmospherics and to expand on the relationship between Lynch and J.R. the goldmines seem to be located in a suburb of Perth - so quickly do they get there from their beachfront hideaway (it's great for Michael Mann-ish mood but gives the whole enterprise a depressingly generic feel).

And exactly what does Perth have to do to get a starring role in a movie? The government spends millions on bringing productions to our State yet filmmakers do their very best to disguise the fact they are making a movie here and not in some cooler locale such as Los Angeles or New York, London or Paris (I've seen the film twice and I can't recall Perth being mentioned once).

I'm not expecting a car chase down St Georges Terrace (it would be rather short) but surely it is high time for us to see our cherished home town on the big screen. Note to ScreenWest: make Woody Allen an offer.

Son of a Gun opens today.