The Tender Hook

In 1920s' post war transitional period, a chauvinist gang in Australia institutes a wagering federation for middle-weight boxing championship. Beside with their drug and beer smuggling activities, they also rig walkover horse races. Hugo Weaving plays the chief of the gang and Rose Byrne does his fiancée.

My reason of seeing this film was because I follow Hugo Weaving's career since 1999's Matrix, and Rose Byrne's career since her appearance in Troy(2004). When the characters are all introduced to us, we found ourselves in the middle of crime chains. Absolutely, there is no mystery here, since we feel like we're part of the gang. Then the only lonely good guy of the movie came to the spot: Art Walker, a young and promising boxer. He defeats one of the former champions by the arbitration board decision. Resembling Scorsese's Raging Bull, the boxer is forced to throw the game. To get the title shot, he obeys to the chief. At the end, he has to make a choice between his honor and his goal to become a champion.

There are no outstanding performances from the actors, yet I liked the cinematography and art direction a lot. Originally written for the screen, the techniques used for passing from one scene to the next is so impressive. The editing has been dished out very expediently that holds viewers' attention continuously, even though the storyline is very simple and unassuming.

This one is originally a good sample of a crime/action genre. Not exactly a family movie for its scenes of drug usage and female nudity, but it's very entertaining for the purpose of watching with friends.

The Tender Hook, or, Who Killed The Australian Film Industry? Case No. 278. This sorry excuse for a period drama takes a cast and idea with potential – Rose Byrne, Pia Miranda, Hugo Weaving, in a Jazz-era gangster drama – and turns it into a sloppily paced and executed soporific. McHeath (Weaving) is a boxing promoter and gangster and functioning illiterate; for no apparent reason he's given to singing Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen songs before bouts. How post-modern. How stupid. Anyway. There's a boxer, Art (Matthew Le Nevez), who becomes McHeath's latest protégé, over his unfortunately Aboriginal stablemate Alby (Luke Carroll).

McHeath's flapper moll Iris (Byrne) makes the goo-goo eyes at him. Sexual tension squelches under the surface. Miranda plays Daisy, a friend of Iris's (these flower girls stick together) who keeps turning up in scenes unannounced. They practice dancing together and talk about "hooking up" with guys. In the 1920s. I stopped counting anachronisms after that. There's a subplot involving Japanese beer and a backstory of Broome pearl fishermen. I don't know what it was all about. For some reason that is not exactly (at all) explained, Byrne puts cocaine in Art's lemonade. McHeath thinks he's a drunk and sacks him. Byrne plots and schemes to help him out again. She's a big one for the plotting and scheming. Most of which causes trouble. McHeath's two gunsels, portly Ronnie (John Batchelor) and Russian Donnie (Tyler Coppin), debate bumping off McHeath when he realises their part in one of Iris's schemes, but Ronnie wimps out when he sees McHeath crying. A lot of practically incoherent scenes get in the road of the film finally ending.

Director Jonathan Ogilvie spends a lot of time working with cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson creating some pretty images, but utterly fails to generate a sense of style, which might have compensated for and decorated the wispy, pathetically underpowered script; unfortunately Ogilvie's sense of film grammar, the lack of structuring of the scenes and exposition, is stunningly incompetent. In an early scene, Daisy suddenly appears in the car with the protagonists. How she got there, and indeed who she is, seems to have slipped Ogilvie's mind. There are many more examples of this sloppiness. Where he chases poetic sparseness, he achieves only wan irritation. He gains awkward performances from actors who are normally reliable, badly miscasting Weaving and leaning on Byrne's ability to project a kind of haunted doll-like humanity whilst saddling her with an incomprehensible character.

It might not matter so much if the story had more substantial characters and stronger plotting preferably not stolen from a dozen old noir films and festooned with witlessly sprinkled pop-culture quotes. But it doesn't. It's boring.

I was swept away with the look and feel of this film. It reminds me of those glam film noir films - a mix of romance and violence. Rose Byrne is so gorgeous. The beautiful 20s costumes and look really suit her. Whoever did the costumes should be congratulated. Her scenes with that young Aussie guy are HOT. Hugo Weaving is great as always - his controlled violence is scary. Like good film noir you have to pay attention to the plot, but I didn't have a problem. And I really liked the music -a mix of jazzy numbers by Chris Abrahams and some modern songs. I hope they put out a soundtrack. The whole film was an interesting mix of period film with some modern touches - like the music.

In the only act of commonsense they have ever made, the NSW Film & Television Office refused to fund this film. The Producers kicked up a big stink & in a blaze of publicity took their production to Victoria. Apart from the lost work for technicians, NSW were lucky not to have been involved...

The film fails on just about every level. The post modernism fails, the casting fails (what is Rose Byrne's character all about ? which 1 dimensional snarling nasty did Hugo Weaving channel ? what the hell is Pia Miranda's character doing?) and the story is a clichéd mess of contradictions. In fact, the story runs like a dragged out prelude rather than a complete plot line.

It might have had a chance if the "pop culture meets depression" style was better thought out and executed. If the casting was quirkier, if the style was less serious ... if just about everything was different.

Apart from the usual excellence in costume, design & cinematography (like most Australian films), the film is just a total miscue.

At a reported budget in excess of $7m, "The Tender Hook" is a symptom of the malaise of the Australian film industry - the wrong people and the wrong projects are getting funded. Compare this mess with "Noise" (under $2m), or "Cedar Boys" (under $1m) and you get the idea. The tough, interesting films are struggling for funding and the flabby, overblown projects with name casts are getting the bucks.

The funding bodies who invested in this deserve to go the same way as Hugo Weaving's character at the end of the film.

Ogilvie's big movie shows his exceptional craft in film making. The visuals alone are stunning, combined with top end editing, sets, and sound. The support players were almost better than the stars. the movie is flawed in other areas, a couple of slightly off performances noticeably from Hugo Weaving (what accent was he going for?) and Nevez (unconvinced of why we should care about him), and the story was so low key "small time crooks" that maybe the production values were just too good for it. Weaving was a little unconvincing as a tough guy although he could easily pull off scary. The violent scenes conflicted with him being a reasonably nice guy to his gf and taking sh!t from his underlings.

It's hard to know exactly why it didn't blow minds, but it certainly didn't blow. Some great lines and ideas going down in the script. Ogilvie shows class and control, craft and art, and I'd like to see where he goes next. Most definitely an art film rather than a big budget affair but with the look and feel it alludes to much more.