Goldstone

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Goldstone is a sequel to Mystery Road which I thought was a deadly dull and disappointing thriller. Goldstone is slightly better going for that scandi noir on the Australian outback vibe. It is still a slow burner and has plenty of things that it shares with Mystery Road. The dark underbelly of the Australian outback, corruption and long range rifle shooting. We first see a drunk Detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen) being arrested by a young cop Josh Waters who discovers that the man he has put in the cell is a cop. Swan has gone to the small outback settlement of Goldstone searching for a missing Asian girl. No one wants to talk to him. Goldstone might get some life with a potentially lucrative mining deal built on corruption. It also has some Chinese sex slaves who have been trafficked. Swan join forces with Waters to investigate further. The locals are not happy, it is a good job Swan is aiming to improve his shooting skills. The most memorable part of the film is when Swan gives a lift to an Aboriginal elder played by David Gulpilil who tells Swan that he knew his father and the perils of worshipping money. The film lacks originality. I thought the rock that Swan is shooting from was the same one where Hugo Weaving did something similar in Mystery Road. The pace is just too languid.

The harsh climate of the Australian Outback is best watched on film or TV rather than actually living there, and Goldstone does it full justice. The driftwood and sand color palette corrugated iron shacks in the vast flat ochre landscape is stunning and the film is worth seeing for this if nothing else. I loved the slow almost dreamy style unusual for an action film, but unfortunately, due to the glacial pace of the action there isn't much else. Although Aaron Pedersen does a credible job, he really isn't given much to do, unlike the prequel, Mystery Road, he spends most of his time getting drunk or sobering up, with no explanation as to why he is on the grog. Maybe he needs a woman to brighten up his life. I am giving this film a 9 as it is the most visually beautiful arid desert photography since Lawrence of Arabia, but it lost a point with the tired old clichéd story line. How many more times are we going to see the big mining company acquiring land by foul means from indigenous people and farming folk who don't know any better, or if they do, are powerless to do anything about it? The mining companies have the politicians in their pockets and are allowed free rein to fence off property and guard it with private security thugs to hide the illegal activities which are going on. Their nefarious plans are usually exposed when someone goes missing, which brings in a nosy outside investigator with problems of his own who manages to survive various attempts to buy him off or kill him off. I am not knocking the story line, 'The Code' with an almost identical plot kept me awake all night as I binged on the episodes, but the familiarity makes the outcome predictable. My big question is where do they get the electricity to power the air conditioning those trailers must need in the furnace of the outback? Instead of shooting at people, all Jay and Josh had to do to flush out the villains was shoot out the trailer windows and the heat would have brought out the occupants in seconds. Lastly, although we never see a cell tower, I want to know how they always manage to get perfect cell phone reception in the middle of nowhere, when I can't get a perfect signal in a heavily populated area of 25 million. Does Australia have secret long range cell phone technology which they are keeping from the rest of us? Before watching Goldstone I was going to watch Mystery Road, but unfortunately Netflix has dropped it. Shame!

At nearly 2 hrs it drags and drags and drags and drags. Scenes meander for 10 minutes for no reason, monologues that don't advance the plot go on forever. And the music overwhelms the dialog as if there's going to be some sort of emotional epiphany. Which there is not. There's no real mystery here they state what's going on in the first 15 minutes and the story wanders around in a predictable way in this morally gray universe. It's hot and flat and barren and bleak and wise indigenous folk do spiritual indigenous stuff.