Review: The Rover (2014)

I'd really been looking forward to seeing David Michod's follow-up to the great Animal Kingdom. The Rover is a completely different film to that, and frankly, I was a little bit disappointed. I've probably hyped it up too much for myself after such glowing reviews. I did the same thing with Snowpiercer - felt let down after that one too.

The Rover is technically an excellently produced film. The cinematography of a stark post apocalyptic Australian outback is fantastic. You really get immersed into the barren world created here. You can feel that sweat and dirt that the character's are covered in. The flies hanging around are almost like character's themselves.

The film starts out quite well. The plot itself is pretty simple - Guy Pearce's car is stolen, and he wants it back. So, we see this theft pretty early on, and then the initial chase. This is quite a tense sequence of events. After this though, it almost completely drops off.

What happens then is a study of Pearce's and Pattinson's characters. It's not that i didn't enjoy the interaction, but it just felt like I was sitting around wating for more to happen. The whole time I'm wondering more and more about the back story for each and we're getting tidbits, which is good, but, I think that slow pace is what let it down for me. Although it picks up in the last 15 or so mins, and the ending closes some of those 'what is going on?' questions, I just felt deflated.

Pearce and Pattinson are very good performance wise. Guy is pretty good in almost anything, but Pattinson is the surprise here. He's completely ditched the Edward Cullen persona in this film. I almost felt like he was channelling Billy Bob's character is Sling Blade at some points.

All up, worth watching for sure, and I probably will again one day. But, just not the gut punch I thought it would be.

Rating:

3 out of 5.