Denise Carter finds out whether new Australian film Mad Bastards is worth its salt...

Mad Bastards  is a serious movie shot in the Kimberley about the lives of Aboriginal men.

It starts with young Bullet, who lives in the remote town of Far Rivers.

Bullet is in trouble with the law for throwing a petrol bomb.

Meanwhile, his dad, TJ, has just been released from prison and returns to his old ways, getting into barroom brawls.
 But TJ soon sets out across the Kimberley to find his 13-year-old son in the hope of making some kind of amends for not being in his life.

There is something very beautiful about this movie, from the picturesque red sweep of the Kimberley landscape to the honesty of its performances.

At first, it is rather slow-moving and somewhat depressing with its portrayal of violence and the struggle of its protagonists.

But the music, played by Broome musicians the Pigram Brothers, moves the action along and the further you progress through the movie, the more its pattern emerges.

TJ may be a rough man with a tortured soul struggling with his demons but he’s not the only one.

At regular intervals the movie dips into scenes of men in group therapy sessions at Far Rivers, led by local cop Texas. 

Whilst they all come to enjoy the sausage sizzle and presumably the company, it is exactly at the point when they are invited to speak about their troubles that they all clam up.

There is something almost Fargo-like in these scenes (remember those two people from the village in those ridiculous hoods who would make a dry comment and nod and then make some kind of tableau with their outlines).

Most of all, Mad Bastards is a movie about men, about male communication, about how some men can have so much pent-up emotion and an inability to express it positively.

Like TJ, Bullet, has seen violence in his home and his community, and his inner rage is in danger of becoming his downfall.

It’s a tale of a search for redemption, a universal theme, and in the end it succeeds in a true sense in showing the complexities of human existence.

>> Mad Bastards is out at Birch Carroll and Coyle Cairns City Cinemas. Review by Denise Carter.

Share this article