Kill Me Three Times

 "This place feels like an open-air fucking insane asylum!"

With a staggered release and recent semi-ceremonial dumping onto video-on-demand platforms and home release, Kriv Stenders follow-up to the runaway success of 2011's Red Dog, Kill Me Three Times, lands with a dull splat on the Aussie cinematic pavement. The rather oblique path to audiences that this film endured works decidedly against its internationally appealing cast, with the always welcome Simon Pegg (Cornetto Trilogy, Mission Impossible, Star Trek) heading the bill, followed by Brazilian supporting player Alice Braga (Predators, I Am Legend, City of God), Teresa Palmer (Warm Bodies, Point Break) and stars of the criminally underrated 300: Rise of an Empire Sullivan Stapleton and Callan Mulvey. Veteran Bryan Brown and the Luke "the Lesser" Hemsworth round out the cast with minor roles.

Kill Me Three Times opens with black-clad, muscle-car-driving, handle-bar moustachioed hitman Charlie Wolfe (Pegg) hunting an unknown blue collar worker on the sands of a WA mining site. After a clumsy attempt at a stylish kill, for both the character and the film, Wolfe receives a mysterious job offer. The job involves following Alice (Braga), wife of the vaguely criminal Jack (Mulvey), who is having an affair with mechanic Dylan (Hemsworth), who is mates with dentist Nathan (Stapleton) whose married to Jack's sister Lucy (Palmer). For various reasons everyone wants Alice dead and Bryan Brown shows up on occasion to deliver threatening dialogue in a police uniform. It's all inter-connected and numbingly simple.

With such an internationally appealing cast, a farcical noir premise, and a picturesque location, Kill Me Three Times flaws are almost instantly blatant. The debut screenplay from Irishman James McFarland leaves much to be desired with its banal plotting, empty world and on-the-nose dialogue and is certainly dragged further down by the flat, bored direction of Stenders, who has obviously put as much effort and style into the character and camera-direction of this bloody noir-ish farce as he did with Red Dog, a film with underwhelming direction though undeniable family-friendly charm. KMTT markets itself as a triumvirate of stories of remote, back-country murder and mayhem, but it's actually one story split into three parts; the set-up and execution of an action, the context, depth and character motivations behind that action, and the consequences. Finally, add a simple and over-used 70's Southern-style guitar riff in place of a score and you have the recipe for Wasted Opportunity.

The obvious inspiration behind KMTT is to create a 70's-styled, Coen-brothers film, but the execution is almost devoid of effort or visible interest. Pegg's charm and star-power is simply wasted, a golden opportunity to capitalise on his comedic skills into an enjoyably evil character but instead he spends much of his time hiding in bushes or sitting in his car staring at the other characters. Braga is either tossed into car boots, in hiding or unconscious, and so similarly wasted.  Palmer and Stapleton are the only ones involved who seem care about what they're doing but with the limited creative authority involved, there's not much to do. What little enjoyment this film elicits comes from the performances of Pegg and Brown and the beautiful setting that is almost as devoid of life, save for the cast, as the film itself is for original ideas or satisfactory execution. A derivative, wasted opportunity.

300: Rise of an Empire

Or 300: On Water. This prequel/sequel takes the scenario of the first film and puts in on the sea in a slightly boring, albeit actual, naval battle. Despite the rampant action set pieces that are paraded around, this film could not capture the magical essence of the original film and I feel as though part of this stems from the fact that so much effort was put into creating elaborate 3D visual effects.

The film takes place alongside the events of the original 300 film. So while Leonidas and his 300 Spartans are fighting the Persians at the battle of Thermopylae, Athenian statesman and war hero Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton) engages the Persian fleet, commanded by Artemisia (Eva Green), in a series of naval battles with a pitiful fleet of ships.

I think the main problem with the film is that it is trying too hard to recreate the underdog feeling of the original and falling short, as well as recounting a lesser known battle. I would have rather seen an adaption of Xenophon's Anabasis, but alas that exciting epic came much later in the Persian Wars and has already been perfectly adapted as The Warriors (1979).

It also seems to me that ancient Greece was populated by mostly Australian and British people, for there is not a single American (or Greek, for that matter) actor in sight. Sullivan Stapleton (Animal Kingdom) does a passable job as Themistocles, but somehow I felt he was channeling either Mel Gibson or Russell Crowe in his rallying speeches. A lot of the original cast have returned, with Lena Headey (Game of Thrones) getting the most screen time of them.

The only noteworthy, although flawed, performance comes from Eva Green (Casino Royale). She plays a female character that is as hard and tough as the men in the film and I was happy that she was treated with the same brutality as those men. I was unhappy, however, with the one massively out of context sex scene in which she dons a pair of fake breasts that are way too large for her slender frame (anyone who's seen her debut role in The Dreamers (2003) will spot this immediately).

Verdict: A seemingly passable movie on the surface, but once you scratch a little deeper you can see that even Green's performance can't save this sinking ship.