Review: Quigley Down Under

American sharpshooting cowboy Matthew Quigley (Tom Selleck) travels via boat from America’s wild west all the way to the other side of the world, outback Australia. He has been enticed by a job offer from English rancher Marston (Alan Rickman), but when he finds out what the job actually involves, he’s repulsed. Now he has made an enemy of Mr. Marston, a very powerful individual who wants Quigley dead. Laura San Giacomo plays a displaced American who mistakes Quigley for her beloved. Tony Bonner (quite good) and a young Ben Mendelsohn play two of Marston’s men, Chris Haywood plays a British Major who attempts to arrest Quigley at one point.

 

All the ingredients for a fun light-hearted western are potentially here in this 1990 Simon Wincer (“Snapshot”, “The Lighthorsemen”, “Lightning Jack”, the underrated “Harley Davidson & The Marlboro Man”) film, but that fun light-hearted western never actually materialises on screen. Tom Selleck is a good choice for the displaced American cowboy, but the film is lazy and uninteresting for the most part. Even the score by Basil Poledouris (“Conan the Barbarian”, “RoboCop”) is nondescript.

 

Laura San Giacomo is normally a lot of fun, but her character is idiotic, annoying, and just plain weird. It’s nice to see some stalwart Aussie character actors in there, with the late Jerome Ehlers looking a bit like western veteran Royal Dano. However, a young-ish Ben Mendelsohn (with red hair and Irish accent no less) doesn’t acquit himself terribly well in a useless role. As for Alan Rickman, he’s OK but plays a stock villain and more low-key than you might expect. The whole film is distressingly low-key, actually. Wincer’s direction is lethargic as he and American writer John Hill (“Little Nikita”) present your fairly typical, clichéd townie western, just in a different setting. The difference isn’t remotely enough. Instead of just transplanting a ‘townie’ western onto the Aussie outback landscape, I think I would’ve preferred a western set in Australia that showed the difference between the two countries rather than the similarities.

 

Tom Selleck makes for a perfectly agreeable western lead, but this forgettable flop is otherwise highly mediocre and disappointing. Good-looking, but easy to see why this one didn’t attract audiences at the time. 

 

Rating: C

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