Mr. Reliable

This movie is a gem. No car chases. No monsters. No real bad guys (although the cops are keystonesque) You will not be able to guess what is going to happen next to this fellow. This is a fun movie for the whole family. A slice of the 60's and a slice of Australia. Good on ya!

This film failed terribly at the box office. It's a really funny film. Colin friel's appearance, should've brought people in. Jacqueline Mackenzie is wonderfully cast. Despite being made in 1996, it depicts an bygone era, of the '60's.

MR. RELIABLE is a cool, relaxed and unusual mixture of comedy, crime and satire. It´s in the late sixties and Wally is a former prisoner who wants to settle down with his new girlfriend, but by a misunderstanding the couple and her little kid are trapped in a house on the Australian countryside, with the police thinking that Wally is holding the woman and the kid hostages. The film contains many charming and humoristic moments as the drama goes on, partly due to the crowd gathering outside the house. They have hippie parties and barbeques, some teenagers make love when a mother sees them, a journalist wants to interview Wally´s girlfriend about her underwear and so on. The filmmakers want to make a satire about media and people´s reactions to a tense situation, and I think they were inspired by Milos Forman´s HAIR and some "serious" hostage films. This is a cool film.

This movie is a hidden gem in Australian cinema. No car chases, no monsters, no real bad guys (besides the police), just a good piece of film. I'm not a fan of some of the shot choices, the sound had an echo and the directors style was quite bland, but there was some great lighting choices and costume designs. Fairly unpredictable which makes for a fun movie for the whole family.

I had seen this film before and avoided it - suspecting it would leave me cringing. I did it a great injustice. This movie is very much in the vein of recent Aussie successes such as The Castle, and Muriel's Wedding - movies that take pride in the dry, wry, and laconic Aussie perspective on life. It had all the basic ingedients of a fun flick, charm, humour, good characters, bit of romance, and an interesting plot with a clever ending. If you see it, give it a try - you, like me, could be surprised. My vote 7/10