Eye Candy #498 - "Red Hill"

Red Hill:  A modern day western set in Australia, complete with spears and horses.  Ryan Kwanten is a young police office, Shane Cooper, who has just taken a position in the small town of Red Hill, population 150 and change located in the a$$ end of nowhere where there are more horses than cars.  His young wife is pregnant with their first child.  On his first day, an aborigine convicted of murdering his wife escapes from prison and heads straight for Red Hill to seek some awfully bloody revenge after 15 long years, with Cooper caught in the middle and out of his depth in the town’s dirty laundry.   Claire van der Boom is here (barely) in support as Cooper’s wife with nothing to do but look pregnant.  Most of the screen time is given over to Tommy Lewis as murderer Jimmy Conway, silently and methodically racking up an impressive body count, with a  little incidental Rose Tattoo thrown in for flavor.  A bleak, dark little film, with good performances from actors largely unknown in the US.  Kwanten is good, but Lewis is the star of the show, the almost mute killer waging war against a small town for reasons that become clearer as they go along.  This isn’t exceptional filmmaking here, but it’s fine for what it is.  Woodchuck sez, “Check it out.”