Last Cab to Darwin

I actually signed up to IMDb just to write this review. Having stumbled upon this film by accident, I couldn't have been more moved. Michael Caton delivers an Oscar worthy performance that had me in tears throughout. In fact the entire cast deliver a completely immersive experience that transported me to the Australian outback, in particular the actors who played Polly and Tilly. And there is no doubt the performances would have shone so brightly without an incredible script. The story is one of both joy and sadness and despite the fact I hate to cry I just could not stop watching. I am a huge fan of the film Australia because of the incredible scenery, which is partly why I decided to give this (which I heard nothing about) a try. I was not disappointed. Everything about this film is beautiful.

Like some other reviewers, I was disappointed by "Last Cab To Darwin". I saw the trailer on some other DVD or Blu-Ray and I was looking forward to seeing this movie. Michael Caton is a very good actor who will never play a better part than he did as Darryl Kerrigan in "The Castle", one of my all-time favourite movies. I share the views of some other reviewers. There was a missed opportunity in Last Cab in that very little of the strange beauty of the Australian outback made it into the final cut. The outback is beautiful and dangerous in about equal measure and I would have liked to see much more of it, particularly since this movie runs just over two hours. What we have instead are endless scenes involving Rex and Tilly, the latter who increasingly got under my skin, not because he was an Aboriginal but rather because he was just so bloody annoying. Were it me driving 3,000km to Darwin, I would have had Tilly out of the cab at the first stop after leaving the place where he fixed Rex's windscreen. Jackie Weaver has never been a good actress and my impression was not changed by this movie. The only stand-out acting wise was Michael Caton as Rex. He played the part with exactly the right amount of sympathy, poignance and empathy with someone dying from cancer. And this leads me to the matter of euthanasia. I believe that in Australia, the Northern Territory, the ACT and I think also Tasmania have passed laws allowing euthanasia in some appropriately limited circumstances. These laws have been over-ridden by Federal Government legislation, this of course resulting in a great deal of unnecessary suffering for patients and their families. I would have liked to see a movie in which the expected difficulties for Rex didn't happen and he was then allowed to die a dignified death rather than the drawn out and painful death that we can assume followed the end of the movie. However, as with so much else these days, Australia is no longer a leader in the world in any capacity. We are always followers with little vision for the future. Australia's resistance to both euthanasia and gay marriage are two good examples of what I'm saying here. They are both absolutely inevitable so why don't Australian Governments just recognize that and enact appropriate legislation that could only make many people much happier and make Australia again the forward-looking country that it was in the 40s, 50s and 60s. My major problem with "Last Cab To Darwin was just the length of the movie. It's way too long at over two hours and I was bored to death by the end, just hoping that it would finish. This seems to be commonplace these days when most movies are no longer the "correct" length of about 90 to 100 minutes. Some movies can sustain interest for two or even three hours but most just don't make it. By all means see "Last Cab To Darwin". It's not a bad movie. It just could have been so much better.

The Australian movie, "The Last Cab To Darwin" released in 2015 is a superb movie that was very well received in Australia. I highly recommend it. The American audience deserves to see this sensitive portrayal of life, redemption, and death. A must see. I was visiting Brisbane from the U.S. this August 2015 and Mission Impossible was sold out so I went to this wonderful movie instead. What a lucky break for me. This movie tackles self choice over death when faced with a terminal disease. It portrays a lonely man's journey across Australia and the grace he is blessed with by his experiences and the characters he meets. A truly sensitive look at what makes a life meaningful.

A widely recognised characteristic of Australian film is our capacity to find humour in almost any subject. When people from other places try to describe our national character, they use words like larrikin, irreverent, or iconoclastic, meaning we like to laugh at ourselves and the sacred cows in our patch. So how do you laugh at dying, let alone make an Aussie comedy out of a road film that has euthanasia as its destination? Aussie icons Michael Caton and Jackie Weaver provide the larrikin mix of gravitas and humour needed to make a deadly serious issue bearable as we share the journey and the end-of-life issues facing the terminally ill cab driver Rex. He has never been outside Broken Hill and must drive 3,000 kms to Darwin to be the first person who is legally assisted to die by Weaver who plays a feminine version of Dr Death (as euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke was called). Like in all road films, he crosses iconic landscapes and encounters bad things. He also meets some beautiful characters like the Pommie backpacker Julie who becomes his nurse, a mischievous Aboriginal Peter Pan-type called Tilly, and Polly, the Aboriginal neighbour and secret lover he left behind but calls regularly. The back story of our nation's inept relationship with the traditional owners of our land frames much of Rex's journey, just as it continues to frame our evolving national identity. While it is an entertaining Aussie yarn, that's not its only purpose. Superb acting by Caton in particular brings you up close and very personal to the emotional and practical challenges of picking a time and place to die with dignity. The film can get heavy-handed in the way it loads political and moral messages into the story; for example, when Tilly yells at Rex "You think its brave to let someone else do your dying for you?" we are confronted with different ways of looking at assisted dying. Rex makes it to Darwin only to find medical and legal confusion, so things do not turn out as expected. For some, it's a distracting edit to have Rex back home in minutes when it took half the film to get there, but perhaps this reflects the truncation of time when the time has come. Be warned: this is a film that can mess with your head about the complex issue of assisted dying, but it's an Aussie gem well worth the effort.

In 1997, Michael Caton endeared himself to movie audiences as the Aussie battler who took on and beat the system in the comedy, "The Castle". Fans of Caton expecting another laugh-a-minute performance will be disappointed at first. Caton plays Rex a cabbie in Broken Hill, a mining town on the edge of the outback. His life is mundane: driving locals around town, drinking with his mates at the local pub and squabbling with his feisty aboriginal neighbour (Polly – Ningali Lawford). When Rex is diagnosed with terminal cancer he declines treatment and decides to make the long drive to Darwin where euthanasia has recently been legalised. The pace picks up when Rex takes to the road. He does not travel via the logical bitumen route to Darwin but instead takes to the dirt via the Oodnadatta track. This is undoubtedly a ploy for the director to showcase some classic outback scenery and characters. On the road, he meets up with a young aborigine running away from responsibility and a nurse escaping the London rat race. With time they begin to care for each other. Racism and euthanasia are sub-themes, but in the end it is romance that steals the show as Rex finds the courage to show his true colours. Once again Caton gives a memorable performance and Lawford is great as his unlikely salvation.

What a terrific film on all levels. It's been released for a few weeks now, but drew a reasonable sized crowd on a Sunday night on the back of strong press reviews. I think it's going to continue to pull in crowds on the strength of word of mouth recommendations. Including mine. Generally I'm not a fan of Australian films but this one is great. Starting with the cast. Michael Caton was excellent and had surprising depths in his performance that I never expected him to have. The only weak link in the cast is Jackie Weaver, despite having "Academy Award Nominee" forever attached to her name now. Even though many of the support cast were not well known actors, only Weaver's acting was poor. She looked like "I'm acting this" with nearly every line she delivered. The young guy who played Tilly was fantastic - and surprisingly convincing in his one emotionally vulnerable scene. Secondly, the script. I heard one radio reviewer say that the dialogue by 'blackfellas' in movies is usually very obviously written by white writers, and rarely rings 'true'. Similarly, writers who want to shoehorn Australian colloquialisms into a movie or stage play often do it in a very clumsy way. But in Last Cab to Darwin, the dialogue does ring true and the writers are to be congratulated. Next, the themes. This is not a 90 minute 'quickie' of a movie. It has real depth, not just on the issue of euthanasia, but also on black/white prejudices in country Australia, and the movie doesn't skirt around indigenous social problems either. Then there's the scenery. Spectacular. And I bet the places featured along Rex's road trip enjoy an upturn in visitor numbers in the next year or so as a result of this film. Finally there's the humour. It is quintessentially Australian dry humour and it's quick and subtle and sprinkled throughout. The best line is the one about the dog's name. Still making me chuckle even now - as much as anything because you didn't see it coming at the time and Michael Caton's delivery was perfect. As Molly Meldrum would say: do yourself a favour and go and see it.

Last Cab to Darwin. Making "The Best of Fest" list at the Palm Spring International Film Festival, this touching film out of Australia follows Broken Hill taxi driver (Rex - Michael Caton) who spends his days in transporting locals to and from, his nights drinking beers with his buddies (excellent character actors John Howard, David Field and Alan Dukes), and occasionally ending his evenings with his aboriginal neighbor Polly (star is born: Nignali Lawford). When he learns he has terminal cancer, he leaves everything behind and embarks on 1,865 mile road trip to meet a doctor (the always terrific Jacki Weaver - Silver Linings Playbook) who has an euthanasia machine. Ready to face the end on his own, his road trip forces him to live outside of his box, as he picks up a cheery hitchhiker (the very funny Tilly - Mark Coles Smith) and bar maid/nurse (Julie - Emma Hamilton). Director Jeremy Sims, along with cinematographer Steve Arnold, beautifully capture the outbacks appeal and desolation. While Caton, Lawford, Smith and Hamilton are relative unknowns in the US, if this film obtains distribution they will quickly gain stateside recognition. This road trip movie covers plenty of issues, and what better place to work things out then on the road.

There was no need for this movie to be two hours long, and I was squirming by the end, couldn't wait for it to be over. 1.5 hours would have been long enough. The film had some nice scenery and that's about it. Other than that it was just a collection of stereotypes. Clichéd white ocker Aussie characters using true blue fair dinkum Aussie lingo. Aboriginal characters speaking pidgin English, kind-hearted blackfellas with drinking problems. Outback pubs, lots of Carlton product placement, the whole movie was shot like a beer ad. Contrived relationship between old white man and aboriginal woman. Was that supposed to be anti-racist? The characters were two-dimensional and unconvincing. This movie was a two-hour cringefest and four stars is the absolute maximum I could give it, and it only gets those because it was relatively well-shot and well-produced, and had some amusing moments.

One of the great Australian success stories of a very profitable 2015 for local films, Jeremy Sims Last Cab to Darwin scored over 7 million dollars in local box office receipts this year and garnered an equal share of critical and audience good will that will likely see it become a staple in collections of local film lovers for years to come. Adapting Reg Cribb's successful stage play of the same name and casting Australian identity Michael Caton in the role that he portrayed in that very play, Sims has done a fine job at transplanting a play into a feature length film and his capturing of the dusty plains of outback Australia as Caton's dying cab driver and lonely soul Rex heads off on a road trip from South Australia's Broken Hill to Darwin is one of the films highlights. But it's not all smooth sailing for Sim's as he finds trouble maintaining momentum in the film which starts off particularly strong and engaging but through a misguided and cliché ridden final act loses stem, particularly with a bunch of side characters that feel slightly underdeveloped and also far to "movie like" to feel real. Caton delivers what could well be his finest ever moment as Rex a man we come to care for in a short period of time and Caton's experience with both comedy and drama serve him well as he balances a nice line between humour and pathos. Rex's journey (which is supposedly based around some true events) feels real and emotion filled but with the film itself set up for a 2 hour long trip, Rex's ride to be euthanized before cancer slowly kills him gets filled with Mark Coles Smith's (who sadly overplays) lost young man Tilly and Emma Hamilton's English ex-pat Julie's loving nurse and both these characters while at moments help the film along also take a little too much away from the film and it would've been nice to have seen them play smaller roles and Sims to have had more faith in Caton to carry the film along as he was seemingly more than up to the task. One of the better feel good (and sad) Australian movies in some time, The Last Cab to Darwin would be an incredibly hard films to dislike and while it never breaks out into being an undeniably standout classic, its deserving of its warm reception and likely long standing place in the hearts of Australian movie goers that found themselves investing in this likable tale of one man's journey to find himself in world that seemingly passed him by. 3 ½ cat trees out of 5