Geoff Herbert – Google

This is an accidental portrait of English life and manners. An autoerotic masterpiece. Totally absorbed by snob voices and locations. A little world of bored upper class friends. Friends becoming mutually destructive. Peddling emotion, betrayal and wasted time. Their chic reality totally detached from the suburban ugliness and the working week. It is not England as we know it, and we are seduced initially by a vision of beautiful , liberated young people. The vision is impaired by their self absorbed mutual destruction. The after taste is sour.

This Hawks masterpiece. Bogie at his best. The hard voice. The expressive eyes. Opens from behind a door. A supercharged orchestral score screams for mayhem. Forget democracy. This is the triumph of tbe individual like Ayn Rand. Forget the police. This is you the citizen stepping beyond your brief and reaching for your handgun. The script is fast and shocking. You win and girls like you. Bacall pays you to forget it. But you persist and you win and you get her. This macho woman, alluring, not her best but enough to get him some grey black and white joy. Riveting.

This film, for all its merit, will not fill the seats of our struggling cinemas. As such, it is an argument about cinema in the year 2019. Does cinema have a cinematic future? Or stay home with our selective big screens? And if the latter, does this film command prime viewing, for a prime fee? And what material will compete with it? What would attract an audience willing to reward the film with a financial return? Does the enthusiasm of the set, the shoot, become muted when the completed work hits the box office? These, my fellow reviewers, are strangely unanimous in their acclaim. Good on them! Am I wrong in expecting Rotten Tomatoes to identify also any weaknesses in the production. Are we justified in making indulgent Aussie dramas, to satisfy our patriotic love of culture and landscape? Even if they are funded by government grants on an optimistic loan basis?