Shotgun Wedding

If you care about film, you need to ask what happened to a film like SHOTGUN WEDDING. There's plenty of bad films and Australia has made its share. One of the worst was called Australia. But Shotgun is not one of those films. It may not be a classic and there are holes to be picked but it is entertaining and dramatic and often very funny in poking fun at the police, the media and society in general. It disappeared without a trace, a bit like an embarrassing relative. It cost the Australian taxpayer $4.2 million and had a line-up of the best acting talent in the country. Aden Young and Zoe Carides are touching as the couple at the center of a ridiculous siege. The film is beautifully shot by Kim Batterham and the story is loosely based on the Glenfield siege in the mid sixties when a man held his girlfriend hostage (there was no baby involved in the original). The principal characters are strong and vulnerable as they face the ludicrous and inappropriate weight of authority on their doorstep. Its theme is of the frightened larrikin who accidentally takes on the full and corrupt weight of Aussie society in the Sixties. Where did the film go? To a distributor in Brazil, to a couple of festivals and to be shown once or twice on television. Then it was forever, buried. It went on to videotape but never made it to DVD. Its little wonder the Australian film industry struggles for recognition. Seek it out, take a look, its a film worth your time. Who says so? Its writer!

Based on a real life story which had half of Australia glued to the news as it unfolded. But overshadowed in the marketplace by the slightly later MR RELIABLE starring Colin Friels, a good enough light drama. The appeal in SHOTGUN WEDDING is its darkly humorous view of humanity, both the unfortunate miscreant who precipitates the events now spinning wildly out of anyone's control and overall the operations of our media-driven society. The picture of police and state forces is deliciously unflattering.

Comparisons could be made with Billy Wilder's seriously bleak humor in THE BIG CARNIVAL (ACE IN THE HOLE) and with Pacino's bewildered little-man innocent abroad in DOG DAY AFTERNOON. Aden Young does his gutsy guy at odds with the world well. Surely Zoe Carides is the sexiest female on the Australian screen.