Gerard Gallagher It starts off as though it's going to be a good thriller involving the mental town locals but then turns out to be a classic revenge thriller. Classic might sound as though I am praising it, trust me I'm not. The amount of 'why didn't he just..' moments in this film is unreal. Most of these guys actually allow this madman to kill them. There is even a scene when one of the town 'guards' is aiming down his scope ready to fire then the villain 'Jimmy' actually spins and shoots the guy square in the forehead. You couldn't make it up. And where on earth does the panther fit in? I've actually took time out of my night to tell everyone not to waste their lives on this movie. I'd actually give it 2 for the laugh I got at some points (I can assure you it was not meant).

Spikeopath Red Hill is written and directed by Patrick Hughes. It stars Ryan Kwanten, Steve Bisley, Tom E. Lewis and Claire van der Boom. Music is by Dmitri Golovko and cinematography by Tim Hudson.Young city cop Shane Cooper (Kwanten) gets a transfer to Red Hill, a place he hopes is a quiet enough town for himself and his pregnant wife to successfully raise a family. But his arrival at work coincides with the escape from prison of aborigine Jimmy Conway (Lewis), who is heading into town with revenge firmly on his mind.Jimmy Conway has escaped and he's bringing hell into town.Utterly splendid Neo-Western out of Australia. For his feature film debut, Patrick Hughes has crafted a loving homage to the Western genre whilst also imbuing his film with its own suspenseful blood. Blending Ozploitaton thriller values with Western genre staples of the past, Red Hill unspools on narrative terms as a gritty and rugged revenge piece.Red Hill the town is fronted by gruff sheriff Old Bill (Bisley), he leads a pack of scuzzy characters who consider it their town and god help anyone who stands in their way. Into this maelstrom comes fresh faced Shane Cooper (yes the name is Alan Ladd and High Noon purposely spliced together), a genuine and honest copper harnessing a tragedy as well as a moral code that's not for shaking.After quickly finding out that Old Bill is lacking in human graces, Shane finds himself coming face to face with Conway, who is all the horsemen of the apocalypse rolled into one. Face badly scarred and adorned with weapons and duster, Conway seems to have supernatural resources to go with his expert tracking skills and knowledge of the surrounding outback terrain (so think High Plains Drifter & Chato's Land then).How come, though, that as he callously goes about killing off members of the scuzzy crew, each time he meets up with Shane, who is in full tilt survival mode, Conway refuses to kill Shane? And just what is that symbolic Panther doing stalking the edges of the landscape? One and the same, perhaps? It will of course all be revealed, and in truth it's no great surprise, the beauty is in how Hughes has toyed with our perceptions about Conway, this in turn makes for a cracker-jack finale.Performances are superbly in tune with the material, Cooper, Lewis and Bisley really manage to steer their respective characters away from being histrionic or cartoonish. Musically it features stabs of delightful grungy rock blending in with Golovko's mournfully ironic score. The widescreen photography is most interesting, in that there's often smart shifting between a washed out palette to emphasise the remoteness of the setting, to opened up capturing of the beautiful vistas (filmed on location in Omeo, Victoria). The Blu-ray is a must for anyone interested in the film.The sparse location is matched by sparse dialogue, there is no need for extraneous conversations or pointless filler, Hughes knows what he is doing. It's made with love and respect to one of the finest of film genres, and hooray to that! 8/10

jherara ***This Review Contains Spoilers***A lot of reviewers have given this film low marks because they say it doesn't compare to a US Western or that the plot has been done before.My advice? Watch it purely on its own merit and forget the comparisons. I would have given the film a 10 out 10, but for a few minor issues that I had with it such as a few noticeable goofs including poor digital with the CGI panther and the cut when Shane enters the town hall that shows him already seated in the chair at the back BEFORE he sits down in it. I also felt there could have been a bit more scenes with Shane getting to know and liking the townspeople so that learning what happened long ago would be more horrifying to him and the audience as well.Otherwise, I like that the plot doesn't throw you all the answers in the first five minutes. You're also given just enough information about the characters to make them three dimensional. In addition, you're forced to face horror without reason for much of the first part of the film. The truth is unveiled slowly and meticulously with enough clues to help the audience along without giving away too much.As for the backdrop of the movie and the music: absolutely beautiful. Progression from bright morning slowly to gray overcast skies before the storm and then to night was a perfect plot transition element. The music kept pace with the changes and the guitar, horn, drums and violin (?) selections were perfect counterpoints to the action. The movie definitely had "grit" and a Western feel to it. If you like Westerns, or even cop dramas/crime stories, Red Hill is well worth your time.

MBunge As a modern Western, a slight twist on the standard revenge flick and an old fashioned morality play, Red Hill is a nice little taste of Australian cinema goodness. Writer/director Patrick Hughes has penned an unsurprising but still involving story and backs it up with strong imagery of the vastness of nature and the cruelty of men. With a solid cast and just the right amount of violence to propel things along without overwhelming the narrative, this is a pretty entertaining flick. A sparsely drawn main character who seems more like a passive observer than a protagonist and probably underestimating how quickly most viewers will figure out its mystery are the only big flaws here but Red Hill avoids so many other of the standard pitfalls of this sort of thing that it feels refreshingly familiar instead of tiresomely repetitive.Shane Cooper(Ryan Kwanten) is a young constable starting his first day on his new assignment in the small, country town of Red Hill. He's got a pregnant wife (Claire van der Boom) at home and a hard charging inspector named Old Bill (Steve Bisley) who makes it clear that this is his town and Cooper's a relatively unwelcome guest. Everything changes, however, when convicted murderer Jimmy Conway (Tom E. Lewis) breaks out of prison and Cooper finds Bill and a collection of townsmen in a near panic at his prospective return. Cooper is the first one to encounter Conway, barely escapes with his life and spends most of the film trailing behind Conway on his path of death, slowly unraveling the real secret of Red Hill. Oh, and there's a panther that shows up.This motion picture is entirely about the conflict between Conway and the men of Red Hill. I would guess that Shane Cooper was injected into the script because of the supposed box office need for a young, attractive star but I don't think it was necessary. Ryan Kwanten does a good job on screen and there's a minor subplot with Shane and his wife but you could remove Shane, beef up the roles of Old Bill, Conway and the others and have a movie that was just as good, if not a little better. A bit better because without Shane, I suspect writer/director Hughes would have realized the mystery of Conway's revenge is too obvious and added a few more layers of subterfuge and misdirection to the plot. It does feel like Hughes came up with the story of Red Hill and only added in the "new guy in town" element later on to make it more commercially viable.I don't think he had to do that because Steve Bisley is crackerjack and the character of Jimmy Conway is intriguing in his stoic muteness. Watching Conway plow through the rest of Old Bill's posse until the two of them finally meet would have been more than enough to pull in the audience and keep them watching. No one besides Shane, Bill and Conway get enough time and space on screen to show much personality, but the tiny bit of depth and definition Hughes gives of a couple of other constables (Kevin Harrington and Richard Sutherland) is interesting enough that I kind of wish Shane didn't occupy so much of Red Hill.Hughes completely scores with is invocation of the wide open spaces of rural Australia. It gives an almost epic frame to this story of personal revenge, though Hughes doesn't appear to have a grasp on how slowly people actually move when they're on foot, particularly if they're seriously wounded. He does use distance to answer that age old question of this genre, namely "Why can't a bunch of guys manage to defend themselves against a single person?" The characters in Red Hill have so much ground to cover that splitting up into more easily killable numbers is perfectly logical, rather than stupidly cliché.If Shane Cooper had been more deeply woven into or totally removed from the plot, this might have been a very good movie. As it is, Red Hill remains a clear cut or two above average and well worth seeing.