FILMS ... with Tim Milfull
The Horseman (TBA)
Director: Steven Kastrissios
Stars: Peter Marshall, Caroline Marohasy
Rating: 3.5/5
96-minutes, screening from 8 July
The Horseman is a local production helmed by Queensland filmmaker Steven Kastrissios who took on the roles of writer, director, editor, and producer to bring his dream to life.
In a very impressive, stony-faced performance, Peter Marshall plays Christian, a forty-something father who suspects there was more to his teenaged daughter’s death than a simple overdose.
As he digs further into her last days, Christian begins to realise that she had begun to mix with the very worst crowds imaginable, and when the truth about her death emerges, the grieving father’s calm face belies the bloodlust that is boiling inside.
Let’s be honest here, The Horseman is not for the fainthearted; Christian is living the vengeance fantasies of any and all parents who have lost their child to the depredations of others. There’s a cold-hearted determination roiling in Christian—imagine how Bruce Willis’s John McClane would have behaved if his estranged wife had succumbed to Hans Gruber.
But Aussies have game on this genre – remember Max Rockatansky’s fury in the wake of his family’s death? Magnify that to the nth degree, and you can imagine the sadistic satisfaction Christian feels in exacting revenge.
While some of Christian’s targets fall squarely into stereotypical territory, and Caroline Marohasy’s Alice seems relatively comfortable as his hitchhiking waif, Peter Marshall completely owns his role as the angry dad. Kastrissios shows great promise in his first feature film; we can look forward to very good things from this storyteller.
Cold war intrigue at its finest
Farewell (M)
Director: Christian Carion
Stars: Emir Kustarica, Guillaume Canet
Rating: 3.5/5
113-minutes, now screening
Back in 2005, French director Christian Carion directed Joyeux Noel, a poignant account of a Christmas during the First World War, when French, Scottish and German combatants laid down their arms and came together to celebrate Christmas, much to the distress of their commanders.
In Carion’s latest film, L’affair Farewell, a similar rebellion is under way in the 80s, as Sergei Gregoriev (Emir Kustarica) decides that he has had enough of party politics in the USSR, and looks to affect some change. Pierre Froment (Guillaume Canet) is a low level diplomat in the French Embassy in Moscow, and when asked to undertake a routine meeting, doesn’t realise the frightening lengths he will be asked to pursue, as he gradually becomes a reluctant handler for the Russian spy.
To the distress of his wife, and the thinly veiled amusement of Gregoriev, Froment is forced to hit the ground running in the world of international espionage. Carion’s adaptation of the book of the same name is often almost unbelievable—Gregoriev’s character is based upon KGB spy Vladimir Vetrov, who handed over more than 4000 secret documents that contributed to the exposure of almost 200 spies, and eventually to the fall of the USSR.
Veteran actor Kustarica offers a grimly determined, ideologically offended Gregoriev, who never took any payments for his work; while Canet is utterly convincing as the reluctant spy, who eventually becomes an ardent defender of his charge. Farewell is Cold War intrigue at its finest.
