David Bradshaw is seldom off the screen as Alan Price, an investigative reporter for a Melbourne newspaper, in this Australian film which relates circumstances revolving about the death of a research scientist who is found to have been connected to a classified government project concerning human mind control. During the course of his investigation, Price involves himself with a possible double suicide and series of drug tinged murders, becomes the last hope of a somewhat withdrawn young woman who is the daughter of the late scientist and who is attempting to clear his name of sundry unsavoury allegations, is beaten by hired thugs, and makes several visits to a sophisticated sex club, all of these among his many activities. One becomes interested early on with the story, as it is written in an intelligent fashion with nice bits of humour and a broad range of complications; however, it becomes as murky as the visuals are throughout this work, and the ending is not merely excessively abrupt but seems to indicate that there is no consensus between the writers as to a resolution. A good deal of the action is spent upon what one must own to be gratuitously coarse behaviour and the boring, repetitious and poorly recorded score is of no assistance to any attempt at quality for the production, yet the editing by Ralph Strasser is very well done and moves the work smartly past various scenic non-sequiturs. Neither as scriptor nor director is Barry Peak successful here due to the remarkably hurried climactic scenes, but some of the cast performances are above average, particularly that of Simon Chilvers as a somewhat shady and perhaps not completely former government agent.
Review of The Big Hurt
