Matthew Quigley (Tom Selleck) arrives
in Australia answering a wanted ad for long range sharpshooters. After
meeting an unstable American named Cora (Laura San Giacomo) and learning that
the man hiring him, Elliot Marston (Alan Rickman) wants him to use his skills
to kill the aborigines. This does not sit well with Quigley, who takes up the
fight for the natives.
The film stars Tom Selleck as
Matthew Quigley. In this film he comes across like a hero out of an older time.
The first scene of the movie quickly establishes Quigley as good and decent,
with him standing up for an older couple on the boat when he arrives in
Australia, then with his defending Cora from the men at the docks. So it
shouldn’t come as a surprise to the audience when he turns down Marston’s job
offer to kill Aborigines. Once he gets dumped in the middle of the outback and
he meets the aborigines, Quigley takes up their fight the story goes to be a
full on “Thank God for White People “movie, with Quigley becoming a hero called
the Spirit Warrior to the aborigines. Then at the end, as the British army
shows up to arrest him for killing Marston and his men, the army is stopped by
the aborigines. This scene that shows the respect that the natives now have for
him. From what I’ve read this scene is edited out of the television edit of the
film, which is disappointing since it’s an important scene dealing with a major
thread of the movie. Laura San Giacomo is also good as Cora, the unstable
displaced American that was once the victim of a Comanche attack. Prior to the
story she and her son hid in a cellar while the Indians looted, and she
smothered her son while trying to keep him quiet so they wouldn’t hear them.
And there's the scene later in the film where she has to protect an aborigine
child from dingoes she gets to redeem herself for her past mistakes. This scene
is very tense, and the way that it’s shot feels like something out of a horror
film. There is some great chemistry
between Selleck and San Giacomo, and you get some amusing shots of the 6’4”
Selleck towering over his 5’2” leading lady.
The standout performance of
the movie is Alan Rickman as the villain. He’s doing what he was doing the best
at the time, playing Eurotrash badguys. While he gets stuck doing a lot of
standard villain tropes like monologuing and scowling at his
henchmen. But he was some great lines, like when tells Quigley "Oh by the
way, you’re fired” before their final duel or saying “Get him out of here he’s
bleeding all over the rug” about a dying employee.
Here's Entertainment Weekly's review from when the movie came out, where the reviews spends a paragraph talking about aborigine's breasts.
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