Backbencher

This film is a remake of an American Western with an Australian twist added to it. The basic story is that Matthew Quigley is lured to Australia to work for a cattle baron (perhaps a squatter?) under the premises that he is being hired to shoot predatory animals. In reality, he is hired to eliminate the aboriginal natives to the area. This doesn't go over well, and results in Quigley being set up to be killed, but the tables are slowly turned on the cattle baron during the course of events that unfold. Quigley collects a female lead in the form of Crazy Cora, and is helped on his way by the aborigines that he was brought in to assassinate. The action portion of the film ends with the cattle baron's house servant, an aborigine, returning to the bush in a symbolic gesture toward multiculturalism. One is lead to believe that the end of the film marks the beginning of romance for Cora and Quigley... at least I was left hoping so, but nothing is for sure in the mind of that woman... she was more than a bit odd.

Nods toward the portrayal of the similarities between the old west and the outback, the plight of the American Indian and the aboriginal Australians, and the similarities of the harsh, dry outback and what was once termed the "Great American Desert". I thought the film did a decent portrayal of the sad state of race relations in Australia, the landscape, and the very real issues of whites dominating and taking control of the land. The ranching perspective was realistic, though I might have chosen sheep if I had produced the film. The notion of an individual controlling huge tracts of land also accurately portrayed the situation of the day.

If one chooses to see it as such, this film is an American Western... but I do think that it does a remarkable job of portraying the similarities between the two vast lands and how they were wrested from the inhabitants, the isolation of being so far from civilization, and the ever present dangers of living in that isolation.

And besides that, the film has Tom Selleck in it, which makes it pretty good film in my book.