Rating: R
Genre:
Western
Release Date: 08/19/2008
Distributor/Studio: First Look Pictures
An outlaw is goaded into taking on justice at its most brutal in this hard-edged
Western set in rural Australia in the 1880s.
Charlie Burns (
Guy Pearce) is a criminal living in the outback. He and his two brothers,
Arthur (
Danny Huston) and
Mikey (
Richard Wilson), are on the run from the law for rape and murder.
Arthur is a violent and dangerous sociopath with a much longer rap sheet than his siblings and a reputation for hiding out in villages so lawless the police are afraid to visit them, while
Mikey is a much younger and more impressionable chap.
The authorities capture
Charlie and
Mikey after a bloody shootout, and the brothers are handed over to
Capt. Stanley (
Ray Winstone), a British lawman sent to Australia to help bring order to the colonies.
Stanley proposes a deal to
Charlie, explaining that it's
Arthur he really wants, and that he's willing to spare the childlike and terrified
Mikey if
Charlie can find
Arthur and murder him.
Charlie, realizing that this is his only hope to save his simpleton younger brother (who is scheduled to be hanged on Christmas Day), agrees and sets out to find and execute his other brother, who he believes has gone too far into the world of crime. As
Charlie scours the backwaters of Australia, he encounters
Jellon Lamb (
John Hurt), an educated yet thoroughly menacing bounty hunter. In time,
Charlie finds his brother, but isn't certain if he can carry out his mission. Meanwhile,
Stanley struggles to bring a European sense of civility to the rough and tumble land he now calls home, while his wife
Martha (
Emily Watson) becomes the focus of the lustful appetites of the men in town.
The Proposition was written by
rock star and novelist
Nick Cave; he previously collaborated with director
John Hillcoat on the film
Ghosts... of the Civil Dead.
~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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