Starring: Jordan Fraser-Trumbull, Damon Hunter, Kevin Dee, Clayton Watson, Nicole Pastor
Distributor: Madman Films
Runtime: 111 mins. Reviewed in Oct 2023
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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A prisoner on parole is abducted and made to face the consequences of his crime.
Looking at the poster for The Cost and reading the taglines to promote it, many audiences might well be put off, thinking, simply, here is another vigilante and vengeance drama. It is, but it is much more. This is an Australian film but with universal themes. The early sequences take place in suburban Melbourne, but the action then moves out into the Australian bush where the photography captures the atmosphere and beauty, as well as some sinister undertones, of the Australian landscapes.
For the film’s first 30 minutes, the audience is introduced to three characters, seen in dramatic situations but no explanations offered. There is David (Fraser-Trumbull), youngish, going to the hardware store for his purchases; Aaron (Hunter) a family man at home; and Troy (Dee), emerging from the factory, then home alone, drinking and watching TV, then leaving to buy a sixpack.
This drama would work best with audiences knowing not much more about the plot and its developments. There is tension, the background of the situation gradually emerging, brutal crime, prison, the effect of imprisonment, consequences for the relatives of the crime victim, anger (rage) and the issue of citizens taking it on their own responsibility to execute what they see as justice.
Themes of vigilante justice have been taken up over the decades, especially in many American thrillers (think Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson). The Cost, however, is a very different kind of film. One might call it a film of moral probing.
And for the moral probing, it will depend on the attitudes and presuppositions of audience members and whether they will identify readily with the vigilante theme or will find it, even though it is psychologically understandable, repellent. Writer-director, Matthew Holmes, has been quoted as saying he was intrigued by the situations of legal justice and vigilante justice and, with his co-writer, Gregory Moss, they created a drama of ‘what if . . .?’.
The dialogue provides opportunities for the audience to be emotionally engaged – to feel disgust, to wonder about imposing justice with violence and lowering oneself to the level of the criminal. And, even with planning, is it possible to go through with actual vindictive vengeance? (It is interesting to note Holmes’ previous film was The Legend of Ben Hall, intriguing in itself, the portrait of a bushranger in the 19th century Australian context of justice and injustice, exploring the bushranger mind and ethos amid beautifully filmed Australian landscapes.)
The film uses ordinary situations to create tension, stopping at a service station at night and a friendly truck driver, the police pulling the drivers up at night because of a faulty taillight and, more dramatically, a local farmer turning up interrupting the dramatic confrontations without realising it but eventually drawn into it as an innocent bystander, audiences than identifying with him.
This is a well-written and directed film with excellent performances that make the behaviour of each character credible. Some audiences may dismiss it or just take it as another vengeance movie. For those who are willing to spend some time with it, even though it is tough going, it is a telling exploration of moral behaviour.
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