The Rover

David Michôd is an extremely visual director. Rather than the narrow suburban streets of Melbourne in Animal Kingdom, we get the sweeping plains of South Australia. Set a decade after a presumed economic collapse that affected only Australia, we follow Eric (Guy Pearce), a former soldier and farmer, who is trying to recover his stolen car.

Guy Pearce is a force of nature in this film. His character Eric is unrelenting in his goal and will stop at nothing. He kills whoever gets in his way and though extremely brutal these scenes can be rather light, even funny, in this increasingly bleak film. Pearce is mostly silent and speaks when only absolutely necessary.

This is probably Robert Pattinson's best performance, but I've only seen him in two movies including this one (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire being the other). He plays Rey, a young American, who once you figure out is a little slow becomes rather endearing. Like Eric he struggles to get used to the fact that you have to kill people to survive in this world.

The film handles it's subject matter with a pretty blunt approach. Michôd is unapologetic in his depiction of the violence and brutality. Nor does he skirt around the issues of a country selling it's own resources offshore. I viewed it almost as a cautionary tale of what would come if Australia kept selling it's resources and land the way it is now.

Michôd also explores the ideas of knowledge. Pearce delivers an incredible speech about what we truly know as opposed to what we are just told to accept as the truth. This permeates throughout the film in it's imagery. The film is also extremely bleak and we are shown that we just have to accept life as it comes.

On top of everything this is a beautifully cinematic film. The countryside is amazing to look at and we get some fantastic cinematography. There are endless shots of Pearce driving but you never get tired of looking at them.

Verdict: An extremely bleak film that endlessly rolls throughout the country. At the end it you'll understand that it all makes sense.