An indigenous detective returns to the Outback to investigate the murder of a young girl.
Deliberately paced and expertly acted by a weathered ensemble including Hugo Weaving, Mystery Road also boasts some of cinema’s most gorgeous magic-hour photography even if, elsewhere, light is in perilously short supply.
Spectacular scenery, genre signposts, and a half-buried history of colonial abuse.
Measured and sparing in its use of dialogue and music, Mystery Road remains strikingly atmospheric and expertly controlled as Sen builds a sense of quietly escalating tension.
Slow-burning but very powerful.
The whole thing might have been improved by slightly nippier pacing, but the slow-burn action pays off with a spectacular climactic gun-fight, where the distances are so vast it takes half a second for bullets to find their marks.
It may be a little messy and overplotted in places but it creates a strong sense of slowly escalating tension.
Aaron Pedersen excels as an indigenous Australian cop caught between two worlds in Ivan Sen's evocative outback thriller.
Slow but reasonably suspenseful.
A brilliantly executed final shoot-out and some gorgeous cinematography can’t save this plodding, plot-hole strewn Australian Outback-set procedural.
Edinburgh Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Friday August 29, 2014, until Thursday September 4, 2014. More info: www.filmhousecinema.com
Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow from Friday August 29, 2014, until Thursday September 4, 2014. More info: http://www.glasgowfilm.org/theatre/
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