The Proposition
2005
**
Director: John Hillcoat
Cast: Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, Emily Watson, Danny Huston, David Wenham, Richard Wilson, John Hurt, Tom E. Lewis, Leah Purcell
A settler family in the Australian Outback is raped and murdered by a group of outlaws headed by Arthur Burns and his brothers Charlie and Mikey. An English lawman captures the last two and makes an offer to Charlie. If he goes out and kills Arthur, Mikey will not be hanged. The premise sets up an intriguing moral dilemma, but Nick Cave's muddled script only explores it from the lawman's perspective. His violent Western does recreate a world which feels authentically gritty and uncivilised. In this lawless frontier nobody's righteous, or remotely appealing, or properly fleshed out. As a case in point, the three brothers include a wailing retard, a monosyllabic stoneface, and a shamanic psychopath. Cave co-wrote the moody soundtrack with Warren Ellis.
