Interesting city drama of insurance scam with a reasonable romance added as a diversion RISK offers watchable lanky local dude-actor Tom Long quite a good addition to his CV. Unfortunately it has Bryan Brown doing his usual Aussie slang laden yobbo bloke thing we cinema-goers have suffered through since COCKTAIL. Talking out of the side of his mouth and scowling...so tedious. The gorgeous Claudie Karvan however is the girl and she is always competent and easy to believe..perhaps it is her acting no matter what the material. The other star of this 'quite good' film is the city of Sydney itself and this stab at 'office block business' not often depicted in Australian movies is a fairly successful attempt at a Grisham style thriller. THE FIRM -ish in Sydney? Close. It did not have much of a release and probably looked to possible audiences like a TV movie which is certainly is not.

The hero, Ben, is not so much a man as a man-shaped jellyfish. Maybe the plot requires him to do almost anything anyone else asks of him, but he could at least do so with some attitude - not necessarily "attitood", in the American sense; I'd merely like him to have some point of view or other towards his own spinelessness. (As Jack Lemmon does in "The Apartment". Maybe I would have enjoyed "Risk" more if I hadn't seen "The Apartment" a few hours earlier.) He could at the very least have been aware of it. But his character is so completely amorphous that it comes as a shock to hear him narrating events. The character we see on screen is scarcely capable of forming sentences, let alone using them to express ideas. And the heroine is a similarly empty creation. (I winced when the two of them fell for each other; they seemed to be doing it simply because the film noir genre required it. This is NOT a remake of "Double Indemnity", but someone evidently thought that it was.)The gimmick behind the story is a good one and the direction is uninspired without being flawed in any particular way (at least, not obviously); had the central characters been characters, perhaps it might have worked well enough.

I found "Risk" quite enjoyable even if the writing was a little bit loose. Tighter writing would have resulted in a first class movie. Visually the car accident scene was gut wrenching for what wasn't shown on the screen. I was very impressed by the two songs played by ex Canberra band 78 Saab - "Whatever makes you happy" and "Sunshine". The band has a great sound. Pity the movie is not being shown in North America.

What a dreary, plodding film this is!Sure, it's dressed up in a slick package - read as 'pretty pictures'- but it's a bit like watching characters smoke on screen (yes, they look cool, but you know they smell bad). Tom Long is proving himself as the master of monotone morons. Is this all he can play? When you see the trailer to this film, you may be mistaken in thinking it's a fast paced thriller. It should be, but there's nothing thrilling about it. Tom Long sits there looking serious, Claudia Karvan does her hard faced, cold hearted character we've seen too many times from her and Bryan Brown drinks his beer, smokes his cigs and calls everyone a b**tard. Brian Meegan is the one standout performer and he only gets about 4 minutes screen time anyway. Alan White knows his shot composition, but at the end of the day, it's a meaningless, empty experience (just like his earlier Erskinville Kings) - I mean, is the guy a director or a cinematographer?A total lack of character and emotional involvement.Australian film is in a bad state if this is where we're at.