West

WEST Lives unravel in this potent tale of suburban boredom and violence.

As I settled in to watch West, the story of two young under-educated slackers getting into trouble in Sydney's western suburbs, I experienced a hedonistic urge for a geographical alternative. Why, for once, couldn't it be East, the story of the West boys' privileged counterparts - rich kids in sharp suits exchanging sharp talk while getting into trouble in sleek, expensive Sydney? But that hasn't been the Australian way. We rarely see the city's moneyed class taken apart on screen. Our writers and directors prefer to look for their stories elsewhere and it has to be said that West's writer-director, Daniel Krige, is one of the most persuasive. The film's opening has Pete (Khan Chittenden) and his cousin, Jerry (Nathan Phillips), drinking beer and smoking dope in their favourite haunt - under a bridge over a stormwater canal. It's not exactly a scene rich in dramatic promise, yet when it comes to disarming your prejudices, Krige proves an expert. West's settings are where he grew up. It's his turf. Clearly, it fascinates and exasperates him. He also knows how to hold its extremes in delicate balance, giving us a place where boredom and violence come together repeatedly in the unholiest of alliances.

In their bunker-like retreat, Pete and Jerry are getting in the mood for a night of partying. They're also engaged in an unusually reflective conversation. Jerry, strangely enough, wants to talk about the future. He says he still doesn't know what he's going to do with the year ahead - a remark that mystifies Pete. He says that they'll do what they did last year. They'll see what happens. He doesn't believe in making plans. "They don't happen. You get depressed." In these few words the film lays out its theme. For Jerry does make plans and they mark the beginning of his life's unravelling.

At the party, we follow a bleary-eyed Pete, who is lusting after Cheryl (Gillian Alexy), a girl whose good looks and sexual swagger magnetise every male she meets. Predictably, he has no luck; she bypasses him in favour of Jerry, possibly because he's not as stoned and can still string a few sentences together. It's not Pete's night. Pursuing his part-time job as a drug dealer, he offends Kenwood (Anthony Hayes), the most loathsome member of a gang of thugs, and is beaten up and robbed.

These are the basic outlines of the cousins' circumscribed world. At night, it takes on a spurious poetry born of noise and bustle and the shimmer of neon on slick, wet pavements. But in the flat glare of daytime, all the promise and colour are leached out of it. Jerry desperately wants to escape and he takes what he hopes will be his first step by getting a regular job behind the counter of the local fast food outlet. The extent of his good intentions can be seen by his willingness to wear a cap decorated with chicken wings while making clucking jokes at his own expense.

Unimpressed, Pete just carries on as usual, lounging round with his drug-dealing boss, who leads an amiably addled half-life in front of his flat-screen television set. And when this routine wears thin, Pete goes to the bunker by the canal and sits smoking and drinking with Mick (Michael Dorman), another equally aimless twentysomething. Mick is afflicted with a stammer and an abiding pessimism. He also displays an unnerving preoccupation with moral hypotheses. "Would you wear a condom if you raped a girl?" he asks Pete, who's so shocked by the question that he can't stop thinking about it, or its sub-text: that the vacuum created by frustration and hopelessness could conceivably become toxic and cause him to do something he'd forever regret.

When the inevitable tragedy happens, they're all caught up in it. Saddest of all is the good-natured Jerry, who falls in love with Cheryl and makes the mistake of telling her so. It's a poignant performance by Phillips, whose Jerry is a compact, energetic figure, brimming over with a new and touching faith in the power of his own will. Chittenden's Pete is just as convincing. Lanky and soulful, he moves to a slower tempo than his cousin but his seeming passivity is deceptive. Behind it lies a deep reservoir of anger.

Krige's grasp of the narrative slips occasionally to make you wince with an inconsistency or a lapse in logic but his talent for the elliptical saves him at every turn. He has a flair for the kind of moment that can sum up a lifetime. He doesn't have to use words to spell out the contradictions in the bond between the cousins, for instance. He catches it in a single shot of them as they lie around smoking and talking in the bedroom they share in Jerry's mother's house. It's in the way the light falls across their bodies, forming sharply edged shadows that both link and separate them.

West is life in the bell jar. You may not want to be there but you can't deny the potency of the experience. Even so, I'm still hankering after East. For the right filmmaker, it could turn up narrative gold.

• Sandra Hall, Reviewer

Pharken oath mate, pack us a billy, Goes hard, like my skyline. The mincers in the comments can f off

I caught this at the Sydney Film Festival and went in looking forward to seeing it as I'd only just read about it in the festival guide.

I found it to be quite tedious. Mainly because I didn't care about any of the characters (with the exception of Nathan Phillips who gave believable empathy with his performance). The lead actor (Khan Chittenden) had a difficult character but showed no emotion throughout the entire film, which in turn made it hard to feel anything for him. I don't know if the responsibility for that falls to him or the director, but if you're hanging a film of a central character like his it would help if we could read what's going on behind his eyes. From what I could understand his character was meant to be troubled, he gave no signs of this (other than the scripted obvious ones). He was a block of wood. With eyes. That didn't do anything.

The films setting is the western suburbs, however none of the actors (apart from Anthony Hayes) looked like they belonged there, which made it hard to accept their performances. It didn't help that they were photographed as if they were modeling a Mooks catalogue.

I left this film wanting to know why they made it. This kind of subject matter has been done before and done much better than this. I was hoping that it would add something new, either by experience or the point of the story. But it didn't.

** out of Ten.

Another film made about Sydney's so called 'disaffected BORING youth, who apparently are uneducated, mean , self indulgent, lazy and completely unrepresentative of Australia. Nobody in the public asked for this film to be made and when released in 3 cinemas... none of which were in the western suburbs because the distributor knew already nobody West would see it... it was a compete financial failure again again again wasting public taxpayer funds which were spent 'creating' this turgid drivel.. This film has NO market. The public will not leave their homes and pay $16 to see this boring ugly junk in any cinema anywhere. It did not work in 1978 with THE FJ HOLDEN , nor again with MALLBOY in 2000 and anywhere in between... so why is it here again? dunno. and there it goes... west. Waste. Insulting waste to Australia and the taxpayer funded film finance scheme. This film needs to go to "Brat Camp".. and as even 5 year olds say in Australia:.."bugger off".

Really, I cannot believe why this movie isn't up and around the 7-8 territory, as it fictionally nails the way in which the suburbs of western Sydney operate. Also, I am lazy and don't really feel like writing a long review.

Brutally honest it is, containing the mixed-up and meddled world of youth druggery, emotional recovery and sadistic thuggery. Each of these aspects is delved into thoroughly throughout "West", all examined with utmost honesty. Enlightening the audience to both sides of the moon, we see the "unlikeable characters" portray what western Sydney truly can be, by both night and day.

The "unlikeable characters" - which one reviewer refers to as a detriment to the films quality and citing it as a prime reason for their 1/10 rating - are the most important part of "West". Adding amazing amounts of authenticity to the already stunningly real environment, the feeling which will gestate within the audience towards the film's characters will resonate with an emotional and intrigued view you gain if you watch this whilst taking note of the contextual influences upon the its production.

"West" - 9/10.