Mystery Road can best be described as an Aboriginal noir western. Aaron Pedersen is Detective Jay Swan. A determined indigenous cop who never seems to give up despite the obstacles in his way which includes threats and racism.The detective wears a white cowboy hat but seems to use very little of his grey cells in the head as he investigates the murder of a young Aboriginal prostitute in the outback.This is a very slow burn thriller with some unresolved side plots and conspiracies. I really found this film hard work because it was so tedious. Only the shoot out at the end perked things up but it really is a boring film with little reward value.

All of us want to be genuinely ourselves, and nearly all of us are at the mercy of societal imprints with urges so great we cannot escape them. Few of us can be calm in ourselves.I suppose this is one reason we seek films that are genuine and/or characters that are whole. Characters that are broken can make for good stories, but that is a different sort of compulsive draw for a film. Here, I think what this filmmaker attempted was the notion of genuine being in a genuine artifact.The *being* first. The main character here is an aborigine who as a detective can act as the unflinching driver of a procedural, the man of the earth who knows the place and people... plus the typical hero in an American western who comes into town and disrupts the gang who owns it. Other commenters like this actor and the way he moves in a modern western form.I am a viewer from the US, and I have some trouble with this. I do see the cleanliness of the project; one can appreciate the fact that the writer is also the director, cinematographer and editor. It is genuinely artisanal in that respect. But it lacks any reflection of the filmmaker's personality, as do say Clint Eastwood's films in a similar vein. It cleaves too much to an American western in fact, and for this viewer there was nothing distinctly Australian in it.Other than accent, the racists were not different than bozos within a few miles of me here. The shootout was too clean an ending for such a (relatively) complex story. So the film did not seem genuine because it gave the impression of being appropriated in nearly all respects, including the blocking.And the hero did not strike me as genuine either. I assume most Australian viewers would know the popular fictional Black Australian detective Bony who worked in the same area. He would encounter the same racist barriers but be quite a bit more intellectually deductive than our guy here. All the guy here seems to do is persist, where Bony is a sort of Poirot in tune with the land. It would have worked better with one of those amazing, unique faces, color and stride that are distinct in Oz.

MYSTERY ROAD is another atmospheric, well-made and well-acted Australian movie that contains bags more style and atmosphere than many a bigger-budgeted Hollywood movie. This one's set in the much-ignored Aboriginal community and a kind of poverty-row slum that will be familiar to anybody who's sat through the gruelling SNOWTOWN.Thankfully, MYSTERY ROAD isn't anywhere near as grim as that movie, although it is a murder mystery in which young Aboriginal girls are being found with their throats slit, their bodies having been partially eaten by wild dogs. Rogue cop Aaron Pedersen is on the case, and he predictably comes up against the usual racism and conspiracies in his bid to discover the truth behind the murders.The film as a whole has a compelling vibe and despite being slow-paced it's completely engrossing. The low-tech nature of the production gives it a naturalistic feel and the performances are excellent, particularly from the bigger names like Hugo Weaving (THE MATRIX), Damian Walshe-Howling (THE REEF), Bruce Spence (MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR), and Ryan Kwanten (RED HILL) who all give subdued, authentic turns.My only real complaint is that there are so many sub-plots here that half of them don't get tied up, leaving too many loose ends at the climax. Still, the film-makers make up for this by staging a lengthy, action-packed climax that's one of the most nail-biting, realistic, and gripping that I've seen in a while.

There is a class of film lovers who want to concede and live the eras of film making. Even though they were born in situations separated by time and space, they feel nostalgic about the early and subsequent industrial era diffusion (and its effects) brought in thru history, literature and cinema: The periods when homesteaders entered Dodge City, when London started getting crawled in by villagers or when families from a big city relocated to newly planned adjoining suburbs. If you identify with this description, you've probably got a treasure here.19th century Wild West lives in 21st century Bush! Not that it's uncreative; the history of filmography is etched in this 2 hours intelligent crime story. Referencing the classic westerns to earliest neo-noirs to recent crime features, the unknown director theoretically beautifies the Film making.The score is as quiet as the life itself while as intriguing as its characters. Unbelievably well photographed! Aerial shots and silhouette wides suit the mood of terror in an uncivil, dusty town with principal actors having a gem to showcase their worth. Screen writing concerned me a bit but that doesn't stop me from saying that if given a worldwide interest, I'm sure Australia will unbland the perceptions of Australianness and allow us into new realms of cinematic and cultural entertainment.