The Final Winter

I was privileged to get an invite to the cast and crew screening of the final cut of The Final Winter, and was pretty well blown away.

This is a great film - exciting, heart-wrenching, funny - beautifully written, wonderful performances, excellent cinematography, and some great cameos from the likes of Thomas Kenneally and real life Newtown Jets legends, Phil Sigsworth and Tom Raudonikis.

One of the most enjoyable Aussie films I've seen in years - and not just for football fans. A look around the audience at the end of the film saw all of the women, and a lot of the men in the audience, furtively, or openly wiping away tears. A knockout performance by Matt Nable who wrote and co-produced the film and took the challenging main role. He brings an appealing pathos and depth to the role. He's definitely one to keep an eye on. Equally great performances by John Jarratt, Raelee Hill, Nathaniel Dean and Matty Johns in his first serious dramatic role.

Keep an eye out for it in Cinemas later this year. Highly recommended.

This is a great little Australian film about how men really screw things up for themselves.

The scene - suburban Australia in the early 1980's, when Rugby league was moving from amateur clubs to the super-clubs we see now.

The characters - Grub has been playing for his rugby club for about 11 years. He's getting older and his marriage is getting stale. He has a fraught relationship with his brother, his wife, his coach - with just about everyone, in fact. He's unlikable, but very well acted by Matt Nable (a former rugby player himself, apparently).

The story starts with an on-field incident which may well end Grub's career. The film then follows the characters as they work through the issues arising from this (I can't say anymore without spoiling the film)

My rather bald summary doesn't do the film justice. This is a really powerful human drama which left me thinking hard for quite a while afterwards. It's tightly constructed and very well acted by the whole crew.

The sports theme is going to turn a lot of people off, but it's really only a backdrop to a very compelling story.

I arrived in Sydney in the mid-1980's as a dyed-in-the-wool rugby union man - ex-player, avid follower. But when I saw Sydney rugby league, hard, uncompromising, skillful, I fell in love with it. It was the era dominated by Parramatta and Canterbury. I'd heard about Newtown - foundation club and so on - but like a defeated Prime Minister, the club was gone, and no-one had much interest in it any more.

This movie goes back a few years, to the early 80's, when Newtown was struggling to survive. The old-school league men were being replaced by businessmen. It was an approach that didn't save Newtown, and a decade or so later, when greed and big business combined to create the Super League wars, it drove people away from the game in, well, droves, including me. From someone who used to immerse himself in the game from Friday to Sunday nights, my interest declined to where it is today - about zero.

But nevertheless, I found this movie intensely interesting, arousing some desire to perform further research into the Newtown era. Matt Nable, the Charles Bronson look-alike whom I've never heard of before, and the driving force behind the movie, has done a terrific job of creating a (mostly) polished product. Matthew Johns and Kate Mulvaney were good in supporting roles, but the standout for me was Raelee Hill. I'd seen her in a few TV roles, but in this, she was perfect. The kids were good too.

I wouldn't class this alongside, say, Romulus My Father, but it was still a surprisingly good Aussie movie.

With great expectations I bought my ticket for this last Friday, and while it wasn't rugby league's answer to The Club in the manner I'd been hoping for, the rewards in quality of characterisation and the film's theme of corporate power eroding the bonds of community and family and the examination of what it means to be a man more than make up for it. A quality debut performance from Matt Nable ably supported by Raelee Hill as the wife holding Grub's family together lead the way, with good support from Nathaniel Dean as the heir apparent to the old lion's crown. Matt Johns rises to a level well beyond the Footy Show's ouevre, the pillow fitted unnecessarily under his shirt with the aim of giving him the beer-stained look of coaches of yore notwithstanding. There's a few vague references to ethereal concepts of "the game" that don't quite sit true and the cry for the loss of league's golden era doesn't blend fully with the other elements of the story; John Jarratt's corporate figure intent on bringing the old footballer's era to an end is an almost comedic caricature, but the scenes bringing Nable's Grub and his brother Billy, whose star is in the ascendant with the Winfield Cup and associated riches just around the corner, together in conflict acquit Nable's writing well. I couldn't go further without mentioning Kate Mulvaney's gems of support as Kate, doling out advice over the bar as the mother some of these lonely boys never had. As with so many sports movies the theme is loss, introspection and redemption, but its qualities are best appreciated from a human point of view with sport as a background and conduit for the story. A high quality debut effort, with a soundtrack of summery Aussie nostalgia and cameos from a selection of familiar players and coaches of yesteryear when smoking on the reserves bench and beers after training were part of the fabric of Australian sporting life certain to bring a smile.

Just saw Final Winter at the Sydney Film Festival and could not believe how good it is . The re-creation of the game was very effective.It was like sitting on the side lines of a first grade game. The real impact and violence is sanitized by television but by clever technique the director/cinematographer ? have captured the bone jarring impact ! I could hardly bare to watch. A good test of the quality of any movie is when you've totally forgotten that you're watching a bunch of actors such is the reality of their performance. I've always been suspicious of these actors who spend years 'studying their craft ' and still act like wooden Indians.I think they're called NIDA graduates ? I think you've just got it or you haven't. These guys/girls did well. The movie flew past.It was exciting,interesting and emotive and I will be recommending it to my friends and family.Can't wait to see it again !Congratulations to cast and crew.Thank You.