R | 1h 50m | Crime, Mystery, Thriller | 2016
“Goldstone” sits in a rare screen world. It’s one that began as an outback detective film, moved through a sequel, and then kept traveling into television without losing the dust on its boots.
Director Ivan Sen first sent Detective Jay Swan down “Mystery Road” in 2013. Sen then brought him back for this 2016 follow-up, with Aaron Pedersen returning as the Aboriginal investigator. His stillness has less to do with trying to be cool and more to do with exhaustion, suspicion, and damage.
This film extends Jay Swan’s screen life beyond a single case. The story gives him another town full of bad money, civic rot, and buried history. It plays like another harsh chapter in a country-sized file Jay’s been carrying for years.
Indeed, Sen’s authorship is stamped all over the film. He writes, directs, shoots, edits, and scores with the control of someone who seems to hear the landscape before he puts it on screen. The result has a rough, handmade force, with dusty roads, pale skies, vast horizons, cramped trailer rooms, mining-town glares, and grizzled faces.
“Goldstone” is akin to a modern Western with a bit of police procedural in its bloodstream, though even that description feels too tidy for what Sen is doing here. He sets the film in a remote town built around mining, then he frames that town to seem small against the vast country around it.
Buildings look temporary and shabbily constructed, while roads resemble exposed scars cut through dry earth. A mining operation sits in the landscape with the blunt ugliness of business done at the land’s expense. That visual scale gives the film much of its force before the investigation even starts.
Too Many Shady Deals
Detective Jay Swan (Pedersen) is sent to a remote mining town where the official version of events has already been swept, buffed, and prepared for visitors. His missing-person inquiry points toward a young Asian woman.
The town, however, would prefer him to treat the job like a quick visit and then leave. Josh Waters (Alex Russell), the local policeman, starts out as an obstacle with a badge, but he’s still curious enough to also be bothered when the town’s rules begin to stink.
Around them, Sen builds a nasty little map of shady favors and devious appetites. Maureen, the mayor (Jacki Weaver), smiles through civic corruption like she’s hosting a charity luncheon.
Her cohort, Johnny (David Wenham), represents big money interests with a handshake ready for anyone who can be bought off. Mrs. Lao (Cheng Pei-pei), a Chinese madam, runs another corner of the town’s exploitation, while Jimmy (David Gulpilil), Tommy (Tom E. Lewis), and May (Michelle Lim Davidson) bring Goldstone’s human cost into view.
Digging Up Desert Dirt
The plot works because Jay isn’t simply chasing one bad person through a clean town. He’s trying to follow a missing woman’s trail through a place that has normalized the ugly parts of its nefarious dealings. Sen keeps the ending protected from early explanation, so the interest comes from watching Jay and Josh push through Goldstone’s arrangements, one sour conversation at a time.
This thriller works best when its many faces and places do the dirty work. The town has a baked-in shabby look. It’s as if everyone agreed to call the scummy operations around it progress because the alternative would require honesty.
Sen’s camera favors wide, exposed spaces and plain interiors, giving the movie a dry visual humor. A civic office can feel as crooked as a back trailer room when the right person is smiling behind the desk.
Pedersen gives the Swan character a bruised, irritable demeanor. He’s funny in the driest possible way, usually because he has no interest in charming anybody at all.
Russell’s Josh Waters makes for a useful foil. He still has enough rookie polish left to believe that policies and procedures can survive contact with Goldstone’s grungy local habits.
Weaver gives her public official character an unnerving vibe. Instead of turning the character into a cartoon villain, she plays Maureen as bright and warm, which barely hides the poison underneath. She’s the sort of mayor who could threaten someone while handing over one of her homemade pies, baked just for the occasion.
Cheng’s Mrs. Lao brings a colder kind of evil, and Wenham’s Johnny has the relaxed stench of a man who thinks enough paperwork can scrub anything clean.
The later TV series about Swan carry the character into new corners of Australia, with other creative hands guiding the material. This film, however, belongs to Sen from beginning to end. “Goldstone’s” slower pace may test viewers who’re expecting a brisk detective thriller. Sen lets suspicion gather gradually, almost stubbornly, and that dryness suits Swan and the town around him.
The film has the flavor of bad motel coffee and hot dust, with official smiles that should come with warning labels. For all its corruption and ugliness, the movie holds onto a stubborn belief that justice still has a job to do, and good men still have to do it when nearly everyone else has quit.
“Goldstone” is available on GJW+.
‘Goldstone’
Director: Ivan Sen
Starring: Aaron Pedersen, Alex Russell, Jacki Weaver
Not Rated
Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Release Date: March 2, 2018
Rated: 3 1/2 stars out of 5
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