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Australia 1988
Directed by
Mark Joffe
96 minutes
Rated M

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
2.5 stars

Grievous Bodily Harm

Relocating the 1940s hard-boiled crime thriller to modern-day Australia's golden shores (complete with the Sydney Harbour Bridge prominent in one sequence) does not work despite an engagingly serpentine plot provided by screenwriter Warwick Hind. All manner of typical genre elements are present - sexual obsession, police corruption, vice, murder and the femme fatale but with the sun beaming down and magpies cawing off-screen the requisite atmosphere is lacking.

Colin Friels is strong as the main protagonist, a reporter well-accustomed to wading waist-high in moral sewers, as is Bruno Lawrence as the off-the-rails cop, but some of the other performances are wanting. John Waters, with probably the hardest job, does his best to suggest a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown but some of the minor roles are wooden and Joy Bell as the supposed temptress is as vampish as a visit to the optometrist. 

Joffe works his way dutifully through the convolutions of the plot but does not manage to resolve them into a coherent or convincing whole and one suspects that the main problem is simply lack of experience in the genre on the part of all concerned (Joffe had largely worked in television to this point although he did co-direct the excellent 1986 telemovie, The Great Bookie Robbery

 

 

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