3.5 stars (out of 5)
This third feature from Aussie producer/director (but not actor here) Jeremy Sims is drawn from a play by Reg Cribb, who worked on the script with Sims and assisted in attempts to make it less stagey, forced and implausible. And while it’s true that it sometimes remains all three of those things (struth!), there’s also no doubt that the cast are very fine, and star Michael Caton, who so often overacts (it’s heresy to say so, but check out The Castle for proof), is simply wonderful.
Drawn from some fact, this has 70ish Broken Hill taxi driver Rex MacRae (Caton) discover that the cancer he thought he’d overcome has in fact spread, and he’s only got a limited time to live. A man with no kids or family, Rex denies the seriousness of his relationship with neighbour Polly (Ningali Lawford-Wolf), which is meant to be a twist of sorts but has been given away elsewhere, and decides to take the long drive to Darwin to be the first person to be hooked up to a voluntary euthanasia machine constructed by the controversial Dr Nicole Farmer (Jacki Weaver).
Along the way all the usual but pleasing Road Movie plotting intrudes, as Rex finds himself travelling with Tilly (Mark Coles Smith), a smart-mouthed but kind-hearted young indigenous bloke on the run from responsibility, and eventually also in the company of sweet bargirl Julie (Emma Hamilton), who luckily (surprise!) turns out to be a nurse too. And Smith and Hamilton are terrific foils for Caton’s sometimes difficult, sentimentality-be-damned Rex, as the trio makes their way through some gorgeous outback scenery.
While admittedly contrived at times (Smith’s spur-of-the-moment beer-garden stand-up routine doesn’t ring true, for example), it doesn’t really matter, as Sims again reveals himself as an ‘actor’s director’ and eases lovely work out of the whole cast, from John Howard, Alan Dukes and David Field as Rex’s best mates to Lawford-Wolf, who manages to be funny, exasperated, enraged and tender, sometimes all at once. But it’s really Caton’s film, as he offers a career-best performance that tops anything else in his true-blue 50-or-so-year career. Onya.
I Wake Up Screening 