Old Review: The Proposition

Submitted by corwin on Tue, 24 Oct 2006 3:48pm

As a fan of Nick Cave's musical work, I'd been looking forward to The Proposition ever since I first heard about it. I wasn't able to catch it when, surprisingly enough for Oklahoma City, it managed to be shown at a local theater, so it went into the queue and was sent to me as soon as it was released on DVD. It's a western set in the 1880s Australian outback, in which captured outlaw Charlie Burns must make a deal with the devil (in the form of Captain Stanley) to save the life of his younger brother Mikey. Stanley will give both of them pardons for their crimes if Charlie agrees to go into the hills and murder his older brother Andrew. It's as unforgiving a look at the wild west as Clint Eastwoods westerns, and I very much enjoyed it. It certainly could have used more violence than it had, but it was pretty brutal. In the end, there are no good guys or bad guys, just men doing what they want or what they have to in order to survive. I very much enjoyed it, and look forward to Nick's next screenplay. Negative 0.5 Bolls