Initially released in the U.S. as: Outback
A school teacher at a minuscule village in Australia is leaving for the Christmas holidays, which he intends to spend in Sydney. He spends the night in a small town where he loses all his money through gambling and is thus prevented from traveling further to his destination. At that small town he gets involved with a bunch of heavy drinkers who enjoy hunting kangaroo.
This is not a bad film, and actually makes for a quite exciting watch; truth be told, it is comprised mostly of recurring cinematic tropes, many of which are commonly associated with small towns: the lonely, sex-starved woman (cf. The Last Picture Show), the disgraced educated man who lives in a sort of forced exile (cf. The Drunken Angel, Apocalypse Now), male bonding which conceals whatever degrees of homosexuality, Veneer Theory (cf. Deliverance, Straw Dogs, Apocalypse Now), places one cannot leave (cf. The Exterminating Angel, Groundhog Day), compulsive gambling (cf. The Gambler, the Dostoevsky miniseries), and possibly others. As critic Gillian Hanson, cited by Wikipedia, said, the main character's behavior is poorly explained, and I would add that it appears as if he is little more than a vehicle which the film uses in its goal to depict Australian small-town life.
Rating: 64
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