THE ROVER (2014)
In 2014, David Michôd—along with a host of production companies including Screen Australia, the filmmaking collective he is apart of Blue-Tongue Films, and a few others—released THE ROVER. It was a film met with widespread acclaim, after a successful festival run and one I was anxious to see as early as possible and remain glad I did. It is never an easy watch, but it is always one that feels rewarding and worthwhile.
“You should never stop thinking about a life you take, that’s the price you pay for taking it.” Eric (Guy Pearce) says these words to Rey (Robert Pattinson), in the aftermath of a gunfight where Rey accidentally murdered a child. The line, much like the character’s death, lingers with you long after the film’s end. THE ROVER isn’t an empty-headed action movie that you turn your brain off to watch and never have to think about again after the credits roll.
THE ROVER is set in the weathered Outback of Australia, 10 years after an unnamed collapse has occurred. The barren landscape is occasionally littered by murdered denizens of the Outback hanging from useless telephone poles in some sort of macabre decoration. The world of Michôd’s film evokes a kinship with the one George Miller created in MAD MAX. The two feel like they are in conversation with one another, both movies feeling of a shared universe.
Rey’s brother Henry (played with equal parts panic and mania by the always reliable Scoot McNairy) is one of the men responsible for the theft of Eric’s vehicle in full stoic loner mode (which Pearce excels at).
Eric pulls into what passes for a roadside diner, in the days after everything has gone wrong. Henry and his other cohorts are escaping from the scene of a robbery, when we watch through the window of the restaurant as the truck the three men are speeding in rolls over due to a fight breaking out inside. The argument was over whether the men should go back for Henry’s brother, who they assume has perished in the robbery. Henry spends his initial screen appearance defending his brother, while his cohort insults Rey, arguing he is to blame for his own fate, and not worth the danger of going back for.
THE ROVER is unrelentingly bleak, almost to the point that one would wonder how anyone can enjoy it. Michôd creates a space that isn’t one many like to contemplate and one that most modern movies eschew—preferring instead to send the audience away happy. The world of the film is unforgiving and brutal; its inhabitants are shown in the same light. In an early scene, Eric tries to barter for a gun with a former carnival worker, when an argument over the price of the weapon ensues, and ends in quick and brutal bloodshed for the unfortunate gun seller, establishing early that this is not a world inhabited by righteous folk.
What elevates THE ROVER are the performances of Pattinson and Pearce. The two actors are compulsively watchable, and it makes the film easier to bear because of them. Michôd knows what he has in the two leads and he excels at getting the most out of them—whether they are sharing the screen or appearing with their other co-stars.
Every time both men are on screen together, you can’t take your eyes off them...including the quieter moments, as well.
In an early scene before the paths of Rey and Eric have crossed, Eric arrives in town after having rescued the vehicle the thieves had abandoned. Eric questions a brothel owner about whether she had seen the men he is pursuing. We find out the woman is just as sinister as the other inhabitants of the collapsed Outback, as she offers Eric the chance to go to bed with a young boy. You see it written all over Pearce’s face, as his heart breaks for the world that exists in that moment of pause, his eyes welling with tears. It’s a heartbreaking moment in a film about a broken world and remains some of the best acting Pearce has ever done.
Pattinson also gets moments to shine, subdued sequences when the dying and the crying are over with. In one scene in particular, Rey is telling Eric of a time when things were simpler. How as kids he and Henry used to help their neighbours with towing their unreliable vehicles up the hill on their property. Reminiscing about a life that no longer exists. Pattinson affords the viewer a glimpse into who Rey was before the collapse robbed him of that humanity. It’s a mesmerizing moment, and not a talent coming into the film I was aware Pattinson was capable of.
THE ROVER is a brilliant western with noir and dystopian touches. On its surface it doesn’t seem like anything special. However, it harnesses great acting and exceptional storytelling to make one of the best releases in the last decade. A resonating story capable of flickers of humanity in a film about broken people fighting tooth and nail against the dying of light.
