What fresh hell is this?

The Proposition Review

I never saw very many western films before The Proposition aside from Unforgiven and Dead Man. It's not a genre I fully appreciated until The Proposition. The Savannah Film Society had an article in the paper about it with Nick Cave's name attached to it as screenwriter and musician. There's was no turning back for me being a fan of the Birthday Party and the Bad Seeds. I wanted to see this other side to Mr. Cave's talent. Since The Proposition, Nick Cave along with Warren Ellis has provided very distinct bone-chilling musical scores for other beautifully photographed films like The Assassination of Jesse James and The Road. The Savannah Film Society is also notorious for hosting brilliant foreign films in Savannah that only get a limited release in the United States. The Host, a Korean horror film, is another I saw at the Lucas theater a couple years later.

The film begins with a proposition, more really of an ultimatum, made by Captain Stanley to Charlie Burns. He gives Charlie a little more than a week to hunt down and kill his older brother and gang leader of the Burns Gang, or he will hang his little brother on Christmas day. Set in the sullen Australian Outback, the setting is as much of a tragic character as the anti hero is. Every character is conflicted in some horrible moral dilemma; Captain Stanley trying to civilize the land, his wife wanting justice for her murdered friend, and Charlie needing to protect his younger brother is later saved by the man he was trying to hunt. This film is well directed, beautifully shot, and is accompanied by a soundtrack as painfully lonely as the Outback.

I think I usually have more to say in my movie reviews if a film is horrible. I can't fully justify in words how much I love this film.