In short: Swerve (2011)

Somewhere in the Australian Outback. Travelling on his way to a job interview, Colin (David Lyons) witnesses a car accident that leaves the man responsible dead, leaving behind a suitcase full of money. The other car harbours a woman we will soon enough learn is the local femme fatale called Jina (Emma Booth) who just might have been trying to get out of town. When the boringly honest Colin delivers the money to the local cop Frank (Jason Clarke), he quickly learns that Jina isn’t only the local femme fatale but also Frank’s wife. If you’re now imagining the rest of the plot, I’m pretty sure you’ve got it right, if you keep in mind that Colin keeps being really boringly honest und unwilling to fall to any direct femme fatale attacks.

Consequently, Craig Lahiff’s Swerve is a bit of a disappointing attempt at making an Australian neo noir movie. Technically, it has quite a bit going for it in postcard pretty landscape shots, a generally high level of competence and a perfectly decent cast. The problem is the nearly absurd by the numbers noir quality of a script that includes exactly the twists and turns you’d expect at exactly the time you’d expect them, and characters that are archetypal clichés without even the tiniest flourish, making the sad sack, the violent husband and the femme fatale who might be a battered woman taking her revenge or not the blandest possible versions of their respective roles. In general, what Swerve lacks is any idea of its own, any attempt at changing its characters for the more interesting, and any chance for an audience that has seen neo noirs that aren’t painfully mediocre to actually become involved in the plot or the characters, for there’s no attempt to build any actual emotional stakes here.


It’s still a competent movie in that it is clearly professionally made, but so’s every film with an actual budget; thankfully many of them have more to offer than this one.