Image Courtesy of Amazon.com
Director
John Hillcoat
Cast
Richard Wilson”¦”¦”¦.Mike Burns
Guy Pearce”¦”¦”¦.Charlie Burns
Ray Winstone”¦”¦”¦.Captain Stanley
Robert Morgan”¦”¦”¦.Sergeant Lawrence
The Movie
Sometimes in life one has to make a choice. And sometimes that choice is made for you. Other times, there is no choice. And for Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce), he’s given a choice that few would envy. After being captured by Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) after a crime spree with his brothers, Charlie is given a choice. Either kill his older brother or see his younger brother Mike (Richard Wilson) hung on Christmas day, which is less then a week away. Charlie and his brothers are notorious outlaws, but Mike is only 14 and Charlie’s decision to hunt down his older brother leaves him conflicted.
On the one hand he’s bound to save his younger brother, still somewhat innocent after a bad decision influenced by his older brothers. Given the chance to expunge his guilt, Stanley would give the two of them a full pardon for all their crimes. On the other hand, Charlie’s older siblings are evil human beings who even Charlie (a noted criminal himself) can’t defend. From there Charlie has to ride to the roughest parts of the Outback to find and kill him, as Mike is to be detained as incentive.
It’s a haunting film about the choices men have to make in their lives, and it’s one of the best westerns to be made in the last 20 years. Hillcoat seems to channel the spirits of Sam Peckinpah and John Ford alternately as he’s gone against the grain for the genre. Both don’t mesh easily, leaving some gaps when it comes to interactions of characters, but what is good outweighs the bad enough to make this a worthy companion to The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
This is violent, gritty world filled with people who are varying levels of good and evil. Channeling Peckinpa’s style of violence and cinematography for the shootouts, Hillcoat has turned out a film that is shockingly violent as a whole but not graphic enough to noticeably stand out. The film is rather graphically violent, though, as there is another blood spatter and bullet holes to satisfy the most ardent fan of western-type violence, but the key is that the film doesn’t get enveloped by its violent nature. This is a violent world with violent people but it’s just a facet of it; nothing is defined in the film by violence alone.
Hillcoat takes one of Ford’s signatures to The Proposition as well, blending in long shots of the landscape as well as an epic-style of film-making to the story. This is a big epic story pondering on the choices of men, much like Ford’s masterpieces were ponderings on aspects of life and the western, and Hillcoat understands what he’s doing and saying as a story-teller throughout the film. He has the sensibility as a director to understand the scope of his film, having assembled a cast and using a script tailored for this sort of film-making, and does this small effort with a big enough scope to keep the film at a solid pace.
The Audio
Presented in a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound, the film’s audio comes through loud and clear. Separated well for those with a top notch audio system, the film has a magnificent audio track to it.
The Video
Presented in an anamorphic widescreen format with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio the film’s gritty look amongst the bright bleakness of the Australian Outback comes through clear.
The Extras
The extras for this DVD version of The Proposition are rather sparse, to be honest. There are the usual Deleted Scenes, nothing of which adds a tremendous value if it were to be put back into the film. Most of them are just extensions on to scenes that would merely tell the story a bit more; allowing for their exclusion naturally allows Hillcoat to tell the story a bit more and collectively runs around 12 minutes. A Behind the Scenes featurette is included as well; broken into five chapters for individual viewing, the feature touches on all aspects of the film. With Hillcoat desiring to make a film using the Australian Outback as a backdrop, he envisioned a western based on the harshness of the country’s settling as a banishment place for undesirables by the British Empire. These featurettes lack length, as they’re relatively short, but are plenty deep as the cast and crew talk about the film and their roles in it with some depth as they talk about many subjects with a lot of candor. Previews for other films are included as well.
The Inside Pulse
A top level companion piece to Unforgiven and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The Proposition doesn’t reach the heights those two films did but gets close enough to distinguish itself in a genre that has produced films like American Outlaws in the last ten years.
