Look, this is a pretty decent film, but isn't the working class comedy-heist thing getting a bit old?.
Additionally, if you're trying to do an Ozzie 'Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' type film, you could perhaps be a little less obvious than to stick an English actor like Timothy Spall in a leading role, good though he is. The film seems to have some bizarre sort of cultural cringe to English heist movies, and having it set in Surfers Paradise, which is more like California than California, doesn't help ground it.
That being said, even if the writing is nothing special, the acting is uniformly good. It's been said before and will no doubt be said again, but David Wenham is magnificent as 'Spit', the almost impossibly clueless junkie. His courtroom scene might just be the funniest five minutes of Australian cinema in years, and he absolutely steals every scene he's in. Honestly, it's worth watching the thing just for him.
In other respects it's above average, but not by a lot.
A strong 6.0 out of 10.
Additionally, if you're trying to do an Ozzie 'Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' type film, you could perhaps be a little less obvious than to stick an English actor like Timothy Spall in a leading role, good though he is. The film seems to have some bizarre sort of cultural cringe to English heist movies, and having it set in Surfers Paradise, which is more like California than California, doesn't help ground it.
That being said, even if the writing is nothing special, the acting is uniformly good. It's been said before and will no doubt be said again, but David Wenham is magnificent as 'Spit', the almost impossibly clueless junkie. His courtroom scene might just be the funniest five minutes of Australian cinema in years, and he absolutely steals every scene he's in. Honestly, it's worth watching the thing just for him.
In other respects it's above average, but not by a lot.
A strong 6.0 out of 10.