Hillcoat and Cave have here found their most fertile ground yet for allegory-rich examinations of life and death in remote, pressure-cooker environments.
The Proposition
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Australia, United Kingdom · 2005
Rated R · 1h 44m
Director John Hillcoat
Starring Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, Emily Watson, Danny Huston
Genre Action, Adventure, Crime, Drama, Thriller, Western
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The Australian Outback, 1880s. The film follows the horrific rape and murder of the Hopkins family, allegedly committed by the infamous Burns brothers gang. Captain Morris Stanley captures Charlie Burns and gives him 9 days to kill his older dangerous psychopathic brother, or else they'll hang his mentally challenged younger brother on Christmas Day.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
It is one of those movies--Antonioni's "Red Desert" being the most flagrant example--that spend so much time brimming with moral and political suggestion that they almost forget to tell us what's actually going on.
The Proposition is a very hard and harsh movie, but it also has a hypnotic, lyrical velocity. As Arthur, Huston exudes dead charisma.
The climactic Christmas Day dinner of dreadful retribution is a terrifying prospect, but for anyone with a yen for our great lost genre, it's also some sort of gift.
The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt
A fascinating, mythological western.
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
A sweat-slicked, near-abstract ballet of blood and sand.
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
The cast of The Proposition is reason enough to see the film.
The sketchily symbolic characters and flat plot just frame an atmosphere of sticky heat and Biblical reckoning.
Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer
The veteran rock musician Nick Cave wrote the screenplay and John Hillcoat directed, both somewhat in thrall to Sam Peckinpah. The bonds of family are the centerpiece of this highly uneven, hyperviolent film.
A good film, but it should’ve been a great one.
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