An Aussie kidnap flick that mixes genre staples from road movies, backwoods horror and yuppie-in-peril films sounds like something worth a look. Cactus opens with sometime conman Eli (David Lyons) being ripped from his home and doped, before being flung into the back of John’s (Travis McMahon) 1970s red Ford GT. Bound and gagged, he’s driven off into the Australian outback, having no idea why or by whom he’s been abducted. John, it transpires, is no career kidnapper and is simply chasing a paycheck. The duo slowly develop an understanding of sorts and a few revelations, as the captor and captive bond, forges mutual empathy.Like many a road movie, Cactus isn’t really about the (elusive) destination, but rather the interplay between the pair as a mini class war emerges (John chastises Eli for his “poofter” BMW as Eli mocks John’s ancient Ford). Cactus is most effective early on where the odd couple are very much uncertain of each other’s motives and where the threat feels most tangible. When the film sticks to this lean premise of tense head-to-head stand-off, it does have some effective moments. A bizarre ‘torture’ scene works well - Eli locked inside a car with no means of escaping a full volume kids song on repeat - but unfortunately these are gems amongst a mostly staid experience.
The old stereotypes appear straight away; Bryan Brown as a cop trying to quit smoking, a 1970s car tearing through the bleak landscape ala Vanishing Point, hick outback towns and unfriendly locals. It’s not the use of clichéd iconography that’s a problem in itself but what’s done with them - in short, very little. There’s a lack of ingenuity in the way they’re employed. At one point Eli escapes and runs up the empty and endless road, barefoot and bound. John makes no effort to recover him knowing that the intense heat, coupled with the vast distance they are from anywhere, makes the attempt futile. It’s an over-familiar scene from any number of kidnap plots. Contrast it with the blackly comic and farcically hysterical failed escapes of Jean Lundegaard in Fargo, running with sack on head into various obstacles, and it’s rendered bland and uninspired. Of course, Cactus is miles from Fargo in terms of tone, but the lack of invention here runs throughout. It draws on the cinematic heritage of multiple genres but adds little to any of them.
The two leads put in convincing performances but elsewhere it’s less successful. Brown’s role is brief and contrived, as is that of a hapless trucker, both sticking out as plot drivers rather than characters. Pacing is also a problem as the narrative loses momentum half way in and never picks up again. One luxury of a road movie is that it can ramble along (David Lynch’s Lost Highway actually rambles off the ‘road’ completely), but if it does, there better be some seriously exciting happenings along the way and here there really aren’t. As a result, the mid section is slow and drawn out. So by the somewhat inevitable and unsatisfying conclusion, it’s hard to really care what happens to Eli or John. The mystery of the early scenes is what makes them intriguing, so it’s a shame that in feeding us the missing information the whole thing becomes smothered by banality. There’s a tense thirty minute drama in here, but not an 80 minute feature.
Cactus is showing at the London Australia Film Festival on 22nd March.
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