2 out of 5

Directed by: Julius Avery

An Aussie heist film with comparisons to The Square?  I’m in.  And I was in for the film’s first half or so, when youth offender JR (Brenton Thwaites) ends up owing lifer Brendan (Ewan McGregor) a favor whilst the two are incarcerated in an Australian prison.  The slow push/pull of their relationship, with JR’s chess skills suggestive of planning behind his pushover puppy-dog eyed approach, and Brendan’s charm erupting into moments of frightening violence, is mesmerizing.  The eventual breakout arranged seems outlandish, but director Avery has sold the relationship, and sold the heightened tone of the film, and it sweeps you with it.  And there the film has to decide where to go.  Continuing along a coming-of-age-as-a-criminal tale would have been interesting, and added some meaning to the title, but instead…  Instead the story has JR ogle a girl the camera tells us is hot, and it’s the “wrong girl” to fall for, which would still be all fine and good as a plotline if the movie gave us any reason for him to fall for her.  But why do that when you can just toss out eye-rolling character background exposition (that you know will end up being integral later on…) and have your characters bang at any given opportunity?  This “assumed empathy” approach – that she’s hot, that we’ll do any-fuck-thing for love – drives me nuts, and it drives Son of a Gun into the ground.  The machinations become largely pointless thereafter, stringing us along to another (albeit well-shot and exciting) heist, and then forcing Avery to telegraph some of the movie’s ending in order to make us believe there’s a point to hanging around.

The “twist,” if you can call it that, is so untwisty (in contrast to the film’s quick-edit reveal) that I had to look up a plot summary to make sure I wasn’t missing something.

McGregor is excellent throughout.  Thwaites is great while we’re allowed to think that there’s more behind his eyes, but once the script relegates him to just a cog in a story that has to play out, there’s not much meat for him to work with.