Review: Australia Day

Titled after Australia’s increasingly controversial annual day of settlement/invasion by the British, this is a multi-character racial drama. Set in Brisbane suburbia, Aboriginal cop Shari Sebbens is involved in a high-speed chase with a stolen vehicle containing two Aboriginal teen sisters, one of whom (the driver, played by Yasmin Honeychurch) has died in a resulting crash. The other, 14 year-old Miah Madden goes on the run, leaving Sebbens both guilt-stricken (she knows the family and knows their unfortunate home situation), professionally and personally conflicted (the local indigenous population greet her with slight suspicion), and looking for answers as to what started the whole thing. Meanwhile, well-meaning 17 year-old Iranian-Australian Elias Anton is confronted and abducted by the racist white older brother (Sean Keenan) of Anton’s white teen girlfriend (Isabelle Cornish), who rather than admit to their interracial romance and recreational drug use, has decided to accuse poor Anton of raping and drugging her. They don’t need much persuasion beyond the look of him. In a third storyline, a runaway 19 year-old Chinese woman with little grasp of English (Jenny Wu), flees from sex traffickers right into the arms and the life of a cattle farmer (Bryan Brown) who is in the ‘big smoke’ for reasons only gradually revealed. Suffice to say he has struggles of both a financial and personal nature at the moment and this girl’s troubles are the last thing he needs to deal with. Ernie Dingo plays Sebbens’ dad, Chris Haywood is a doctor mate of Brown’s.

Basically our own, belated “Crash”, this 2017 multi-character drama with an incendiary title from director Kriv Stenders (“Red Dog”, “Kill Me Three Times”, the wholly inadequate TV remake of “Wake in Fright”) and screenwriter Stephen M. Irwin (The Aussie TV miniseries “Secrets & Lies” and its longer-running American remake) is actually better than that horribly stereotyped and rather racist Best Picture Oscar winner. Hell, it’s also better than the previous Aussie multi-character drama “Jindabyne”, as well as Stenders’ own eye-rolling “Red Dog”. If not for one of the plotlines dragging it down a bit, I would’ve actually given this one a recommendation. Instead, it’s a very near-miss.

The trailers with Indigenous characters talking about this ‘mob’ and that ‘mob’ and an Indigenous cop (played by Shari Sebbens, who is just OK) needing to choose whether she’s ‘black or blue’ had me worried this was going to be clichéd and eye-rolling in the extreme. Thankfully, for the most part it avoids that. In fact, the weakest story strand in the whole film is Bryan Brown’s character, who although initially interesting, becomes absurd and doesn’t belong to the same film in the slightest. For starters, if you give it a moment’s thought it’s a rip-off of “Taxi Driver”. What does that have to do with Indigenous Australia or Islamophobia? (the two main issues at play in the film). There’s an interesting mystery involving the disappearance of a teenager, and the accidental death of the missing girl’s older sister in a high-speed chase with Indigenous cop Shari Sebbens. It’s interesting watching it unfold (and not as epic-length or unwieldy as it could’ve been), as well as the other main story involving an Iranian-Australian teen (Elias Anton), his white girlfriend, and her racist thug older brother (Sean Keenan) and his mates, not to mention Anton’s own thuggish older brother and his mates. For the most part it’s solid stuff and only slightly pretentious, though I did think Keenan was far too genteel-looking and articulate to play a racist surfer-dude thug, pretty poor casting there (He was a bit better in “Wake in Fright”). Everyone else pretty much delivers though, including Bryan Brown playing Bryan Brown with a dodgy prostate, a grudge against specific parties, and no more fucks to give. He may not stretch himself much as an actor, but why bother when you can use your iconic presence and reliability? It’s a shame his character is the film’s one weak link, but Brown isn’t in any way at fault. He’s as rock-solid as ever. I do wish Ernie Dingo and Chris Haywood were given more than one insignificant scene apiece, that’s a bit of a shame.

Although one of the plotlines is absurd, and director Stenders overdoes the overhead shots a bit, this is a watchable multi-character racial drama that nearly comes off. Nearly, but not quite. Better than I thought it’d be though, for whatever that may be worth.

Rating: C+