Smash Palace (18.)
Directed by Roger Donaldson. 1983.
Starring Bruno Lawrence, Anna Jemison, Keith Aberdein, Greer Robson and Desmond Kelly. 106 mins. Out on Blu-ray from Arrow Academy.
This cross between Kramer vs Kramer and Mad Max illustrates a streak of genius in the antipodean spirit. Somewhere at the turn of the eighties, there must've been a conversation along the lines of "Yere, it's all very well Hoffman and Streep tug of loving that kid, but what it really needed was a few car chases, beatings and guns." And who could argue with that?
Al (Lawrence) is a former racing driver living in a junkyard, Smash Palace, with his French wife Jacqui (Jemison) and his kid Georgie (Robson.) He's happy doing up cars and doing a bit of racing but madame hoity-toity is tiring of it and wants out.
Arrow conclude their very short season of the early New Zealand films of Roger Donaldson (an incredibly random choice, but they must know their market) with his second feature, the one that opened the doors to him for a long, lucrative and largely unremarkable career in Hollywood, where he is probably best known as a talented Kevin Costner Whisperer.
Palace is a step up from Sleeping Dogs, partly because it features Lawrence in the lead. Balding, with a black curtain of straight hair encircling his dome he looks like a cross between Max Wall and James Cagney. You can't get more pugnacious than Lawrence and though his character is overly sensitive to any betrayal and apt to overreact in any situation, his performance provides the only shade in a film marked by extremes.
(Smash Palace is the start of a mini Lawrence season from Arrow. He also stars in sci-fi gem The Quiet Earth, out this month.)
The narrative is marked by a series of tone lurches. At the start their marriage is a touch strained; then out of nowhere they are having a full on barny and from there every development provokes an excessive response from Al. I can see that love for his daughter (Robson) and the upheaval of his contented routine has unhinged him but his response makes it difficult to have much of a stake in their relationship.
It doesn't help that Jacqui doesn't seem particularly French. She seems much more like a posh English lady. I suspect that this is part of an ongoing down under infatuation with Jenny Agutter in Walkabout.
Directed by Roger Donaldson. 1983.
Starring Bruno Lawrence, Anna Jemison, Keith Aberdein, Greer Robson and Desmond Kelly. 106 mins. Out on Blu-ray from Arrow Academy.
This cross between Kramer vs Kramer and Mad Max illustrates a streak of genius in the antipodean spirit. Somewhere at the turn of the eighties, there must've been a conversation along the lines of "Yere, it's all very well Hoffman and Streep tug of loving that kid, but what it really needed was a few car chases, beatings and guns." And who could argue with that?
Al (Lawrence) is a former racing driver living in a junkyard, Smash Palace, with his French wife Jacqui (Jemison) and his kid Georgie (Robson.) He's happy doing up cars and doing a bit of racing but madame hoity-toity is tiring of it and wants out.
Arrow conclude their very short season of the early New Zealand films of Roger Donaldson (an incredibly random choice, but they must know their market) with his second feature, the one that opened the doors to him for a long, lucrative and largely unremarkable career in Hollywood, where he is probably best known as a talented Kevin Costner Whisperer.
Palace is a step up from Sleeping Dogs, partly because it features Lawrence in the lead. Balding, with a black curtain of straight hair encircling his dome he looks like a cross between Max Wall and James Cagney. You can't get more pugnacious than Lawrence and though his character is overly sensitive to any betrayal and apt to overreact in any situation, his performance provides the only shade in a film marked by extremes.
(Smash Palace is the start of a mini Lawrence season from Arrow. He also stars in sci-fi gem The Quiet Earth, out this month.)
The narrative is marked by a series of tone lurches. At the start their marriage is a touch strained; then out of nowhere they are having a full on barny and from there every development provokes an excessive response from Al. I can see that love for his daughter (Robson) and the upheaval of his contented routine has unhinged him but his response makes it difficult to have much of a stake in their relationship.
It doesn't help that Jacqui doesn't seem particularly French. She seems much more like a posh English lady. I suspect that this is part of an ongoing down under infatuation with Jenny Agutter in Walkabout.
