Three Dollars

There are many things to appreciate about Robert Connolly's Three Dollars, but the film could have been much better if it was dealt better with what I'd call its 2 main problems. These problems are: the unnecessary length of the film and the ambiguity of its main premise or what one's might call the distraction of the main dramatic problem in the storyline.

Starting off its trailer, no one could get the slightest hint what 3 Dollars was going to be about; so why there was a trailer in the first place? However, Robert Connolly in his Q&A with the premier show of the film in Brisbane repeated more than one time in his answers to the audience that "the film is about a good man being tested in all aspects of his life. Tested in his relation with his wife and daughter. Tested in his morality about his work. Tested in his financial situation, and tested even in the streets he walks on!" The film, as Connolly puts it, is "an epic story of an ordinary man." This definition for the main plot line in 3 dollars took the filmmakers to kind of misleading direction. Do ordinary people make epics? Probably yes, but Three Dollars in fact is not an epic film. It's a film that was frilled with many details that made its interesting story less connection. The film finds its appropriate pace in the last 25 minutes and holds it firmly to the end, but the first 90 minutes were so long that I'm sure many people won't stay on their seats to reach those interesting 25 minutes. Scenes, takes and dialogs were all very long that it could have been shorten. I believe that 3 Dollars strongly needs to be reedited and take off no less than 20 minutes of its unnecessary scenes.

Related to the problem of the film's length, one's could also points out to the problem of that the film spent very long time building up its frilled story just to reach its final point—where the ordinary man becomes a tramp for one night. On the way to reach that point, the film mixes many genres for no good reason. Sometimes it looks like black comedy whereas other times it was pure social realism story. Mixing genres, in fact, is good thing to reject Hollywood one-vision style of film-making, but it could be also dangerous exercise if it not done smartly. Mixing genres in 3 dollars seemed illogical and been done in a way that it didn't help the film a lot. Talking about mixing genres I just want to refer here to the homage Connolly had to Hitchcock's North By Northwest. I mean the famous scene where an airplane attacks/follows an unarmed man. This scene, though it was well done/remade in 3 dollars, is a good example for those sequences were audience's attention been drawn to something else rather than the main story.

But 3 Dollars is also a brave Australian film that succeeded avoiding some of the market requirements such as action, gunfights and happy ending. In fact, there is a brave thing about 3 Dollars that deserve special salute: filming the harsh street life of beggars and tramps. I think it is the first Australian film that dealt in this depth with this issue, which most directors usually avoid. Why they avoid it? Because it's hard to be done. Filming the harsh life on poor streets is a harsh practice itself. The best parts of 3 Dollars are those last 25 minutes about the life on the street. While watching those sequences, I was recalling the Australian aboriginal singer Archie Roach's song, Move It On, where he painfully sings, "I was raised on the street/ I'm nobody's fool/ yeah I was raised on the street/ but street can be so cruel".

This movie I found to be cringeworthily poor, but it was something that I couldn't look away from and due to its slow pace, fast-forwarded through until the end.

I think it was because I was hoping for some kind of payoff for investing time with these characters and a story that rings true to many adults.

Instead all this is is a purely emotionally manipulative film, catering to the audience's basic fears of unemployment and being poor - the fact that this successful couple could be so under "stress" after 2 days in which (however unlikely in real life) they both lose their jobs despite having family and friend support networks (and like a poster-er above said, Australia's welfare state to rely on) and wind up digging in garbage bins is just laughable. Even as a metaphor it's just pathetic and manipulative.

What was the point of this film? I just wasted 2 hours of my life on it and there was little redeeming quality.

Plus, the flashbacks were very bad in terms of clothes and using the same actors. Also the timeline just didn't work as Joy Division came out in the late 70's until 1980 (bonded over by the 2 main actors couple who looked like they were in university) and the movie takes place in 2004 which would mean they were together for 25 or so years by that point and yet only in their mid-30's?? The movie seemed like a big advert for mental health services as it's supposed to be about the changing nature of society and how it's "okay" to be a little stressed and depressed, just get some professional help.

Although it has been suggested that "Three Dollars" is about the mind of the Australian Male, Melbourne version, (such as it is), it really could be set in almost any large Western city. Eddie (David Wenham), a genial thirty-something, works for a Government environmental testing agency as a chemical engineer. He is instructed to sign off on a dodgy developer's polluted project. He resists, and at the start of the film we see his reward, a forced march out the door. So much for fearless impartial regulators. Eddie is in a spot, no money (three dollars in fact) and his university tutor wife Tanya (Frances O'Connor) has also been laid off. They have a large mortgage and a cute six-year-old, Abby, to feed. Eddie gets a conducted tour by Nick, a derro (Australian for derelict) he once helped, of the mean streets that may await him, but at the end there is hope from a (possible) guardian angel in the form of Amanda (Sarah Wynter), Eddie's childhood sweetheart (and daughter of the dodgy developer) who in a coincidence worthy of Latin American magic realism, manages to pop up in Eddie's life every nine-and–a–half years.

David Wenham can do comedy ("Getting Straight") or drama ("The Boys") equally well, and here he does both splendidly. His Eddie is amiable, a bit of a duffer, but instinctively decent. Thus he cannot approve the dodgy development, despite being aware of the consequences. Wenham, who has great integrity as an actor, has no trouble evoking the pain that can come with doing the right thing. Frances does a fine job as his ambitious but frustrated academic wife, and Joanna Hunt-Prokhovnic (aged nine) as the six-year-old Abby nearly steals every scene she is in. Two minor roles are in the scene stealer category also, David Roberts as Eddie's loathsome boss Gerald and Robert Menzies, unrecognizable as Nick the derro.

The plot leans heavily on coincidence. Not only do Sarah and Nick pop up so providentially, but Sarah is having an affair with Gerald, who happens to have once enticed Tanya away from Eddie with an offer to let her play a female Hamlet while they were all at University together. And of course there is the matter of Sarah's father being the dodgy developer. This all doesn't matter for the story is essentially a fable about keeping one's integrity even when everybody and everything seems to be conspiring to take it off you.

The script is fine though the pace flags at times and one or two of the plot diversions (eg meet the parents) seem unnecessary. There are also some unnecessary flourishes such as the crop-dusting plane attack - an apparent tribute to Hitchcock's "North by North West". Robert Connolly's only previous outing as a feature director was another entertaining modern fable starring David Wenham, "The Bank". It's a long wait between watchable Australian films these days so naturally I hope this does as well. It is a little less slick and a little more tuned to real feeling.

It's a real shame that films like 'Three Dollars' don't get any recognition in there own countries, because it definitely shows what a great industry we have hear. The premise is quite simple: a tale about an honest man, trying to support a family who loses his job and nearly collapses. Throughout the film, we learn about how he met his wife, and what it really means to be down on luck.

It's hard to explain why this is such a great film, but it is undoubtedly a fantastic story that is well acted and directed, with an as usual great performance for leading man Wehnam. All I can say is that it is well worth seeing, one of the best movies I've seen this year, yet no one will ever know about it. See it if you get a chance.

I watched this movie for a second time tonight, the first time was when it was released at the cinema. I have a very good memory, but when I came across this in the library I knew I had seen it but could not remember anything about it except for a few minor details.

It turns out the reason I could not remember the story is that there is no story. Story's begin to develop but then get forgotten, by the end of the movie, you are left feeling that there was no point at all. The last half hour feels extremely forced and the previous hour or so spends to much time in the past rather than setting up the ending.

Sure, movies don't always have to follow the three act structure, but they need to be good in some aspect, perhaps amazingly shot, or fantastic dialogue, something.

David was the one shining light, as he always gives a great performance, but towards the end, you feel his character is wondering what the point of this movie is just as the viewer is.

If that was the directors intent , then brilliant, unfortunately, it was not.

The Ian Curtis impersonation on the dance floor is fantastic!