Nat was a teacher in London, but he has taken his young son Tom and his daughter Sarah to remote Australia. I would hesitate to use the word "Outback" because there are lots of trees. Nat recently lost his wife and the family is struggling (while Connolly, who owns all the land around, is doing quite well) but Nat always has faith that God will provide. Sarah is old enough to marry and she wants to leave, but Nat will not let her go because he needs her.Three men who have fought in the Boer War show up. Jimmy is near death and his companions Henry and Carver feel very fortunate to have found shelter and the possibility they can save Jimmy's life. Nat is eager to help the group, and Sarah reluctantly nurses Jimmy back to health. But the men have other expectations and don't intend to leave just because Jimmy gets better. Henry wants to teach Tom to be a man, though Nat is reluctant for the boy to learn Henry's values.When gold is involved, the family might be in danger, because Carver in particular can be violent if he wants something.So will this family get out of their predicament?There are a lot of strong performances here, particularly from Pip Miller as Henry and Toby Wallace as Tom. The writers do not give us nice pleasant solutions. In fact, they give us a number of moral dilemmas (including justifying cruel behavior because God says it's all right) and complicated situations, not to mention unexpected plot twists. If you're looking for a warm and fuzzy family film, look somewhere else.One quality of the film stood out--regardless of his actions, Henry seems like a nice person a lot of the time, but he frequently proves that whether it was thew war or whatever, he's not nice.Tom and Sarah are both strong and caring, though Sarah is like a lot of girls her age even today--she wants to get out of this place. Tom is not all that tough, but he seems open to learning to be.Is it worthwhile? If you're looking for quality and not escapist entertainment, sure.

A young boy learns what it means to be a man. This is the summary that I gleaned from watching. I believe the focus is to be on the boy the whole movie. He learns from his dad. He learns from the strangers. He learns from his sister. You must keep your focus on the boy, or the movie can be a bore and you can end up mislead. He trusted the strangers, but got betrayed. His trust came back full circle with his dad. He learns from the guy at the end of the movie what it means to be a man. You know he learned what it means to be a man by his last look in the movie. Look at his eyes. He has the eye of the tiger. Fear has been removed. He lived his life in fear, and now he has courage to face anything because he's been through everything.

This film was seriously the worst that I had seen all year, my house-mate brought it home from the library as he wants to be a film maker and so is among the only demographic that forces themselves to watch Australian movies. This one danced across the spectrum- from laughable to absurd to simply pointless. It was a very transparent film that clearly showed the screenwriter as a troglodyte-pseudo-intellectual, who reads himself to confidence, then falsely assigns himself the role of preacher, peppering the screenplay with little sweet-nothings that are so trivial and out of place, even the lowly bushmen I imagine the film was made for will be deterred.There are some beautiful one-liners in there that the director really had no excuse to keep from the cutting room floor, namely "What is it little-man? You think you've got what it takes!?" , as well as a character who has a real misunderstanding of Henry Lawson's poetry to share with the world, implying that it was romantic and idealistic, where even the free internet encyclopedia knows better- "Lawson had no romantic illusions about a 'rural idyll'."[7] As Elder continues, his grim view of the outback was far removed from "the romantic idyll of brave horsemen and beautiful scenery depicted in the poetry of 'The Banjo' Paterson".add to that a thick layer of repetitive religious rubbish and just about every poorly-written, poorly-timed interaction that the characters share, and you get a film that was very unfair on the actors who trusted the writer/ director, and tried their hardest.yep, a real piece of work.

In 1902, widowed father Nat (Aden Young), a man of extreme religious beliefs, lives with his son Tom (Tobey Wallace) and daughter Sarah (Hanna Mangan Lawrence) on a farm in the outback of South Australia. They are living poorly, with very little money, most of which is spent on shells for a hunting rifle. One day, a group of three men arrive at their cabin. They are Henry (Pip Miller), Carver (Neil Pigot) and Jimmy (Eamon Farren), who is extremely ill. The men plead to be allowed to stay in the home and Nat soon agrees. It is revealed that the men spent time in the Boer War and that the youngest man Jimmy is hiding something.This is a very bizarre and grim film and one that is from the outset extremely confusing and frustrating. It is difficult to describe much of the film without spoiling the plot. One of the first conversations in the film is between the father and a rabbiter and it is indicative of the same confusing dialogue that hinders much of the film. The dialogue, along with the cold visuals, isolates the audience from the sense of place and the characters. This is most likely intentional but at the very heart of the film is merely a hostage situation. It is quite disappointing how much of the film resides with the audiences expectations of the arrival of the three men. We know that there is something extremely peculiar and sinister about them. The film attempts to subvert our expectations by clouding the motivation of the three men and their alliances to each other but this is only serves to make the film more confusing and incomprehensible.It is particularly difficult to sympathise with any of the characters in the story too, due to the heavy-handedness of many of the performances, bar the children. While one can respect Nat for trying to sustain the household as a single parent, his odd behaviour such as threatening his children with a knife and his religious extremities, make him intolerable. Both of the children are more likable because of their innocence and the emotion they show, but like all of the characters, the script doesn't allow a great deal of development. The performances of the three riders are all fine as well, particular Neil Pigot, who is unsubtle in his unpleasantness, but he is still effective in his creepy, unnerving nature. It is remains disappointing that these performances are somewhat wasted given we never truly come to understand these men.The most appealing asset of the film is the cinematography. Director Kriv Stenders stated that he wanted to subvert the traditional look of the Australian outback from horizontal planes and dusty landscapes in favour of something that was damp, claustrophobic and Gothic. Much of the film, except for the overly dark cabin scenes, is actually very beautifully photographed on location in South Australia. The same effort to tailor the script to the look of the film should have been given to the narrative as well however.There are a number of strange moments in this film that are baffling and sometimes lead to misdirection in the characterisation. In the first half of the film the three riders build a small cage outside of the home for the family. After bashing Nat and locking him in the cage, Henry begins to tell a story to Tom about his past exploits. Yet when he realises that Nat is suffering from jaw lock he wrenches the cage open and pulls Nat out as if to help him. The story Henry tells about how he burnt down a home and then dragged the family behind a cart, makes just as little sense. It is impossible not to question his motivations. Similarly, after Nat yells at Tom for wasting the shots of the rifle, Tom proceeds to stand out the front of the home in front of his sister and his father and urinate on the ground. The re-emergence of characters that were thought to be dead is utterly bizarre and contrived too. It is a film that rarely makes sense.Lucky Country is too confusing and odd to be truly entertaining. The long winded conversations and senseless motivations of the characters leave the film emotionally cold and unrewarding. While it may seem like it is initially preparing to be a highly unusual and unique film, it quickly succumbs to many of the audiences expectations about the strangers, allowing the film to degenerate into a standard thriller. Although there might be a greater subtext under the surface of the film, it is too inaccessible and too bleak for the audience to truly care and understand what it might be.