Director: Storm Ashwood
Starring: Josh McConville, Rena Owen, Hugh Sheridan, Juwan Sykes, Bonnie Sveen, Steve Le Marquand, Firass Dirani, Jessi Robertson
Distributor: Backlot Films
Runtime: 92 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2020

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Rating notes: Strong themes, coarse language

A rather challenging title.

This film is topical in many ways. While the main setting is the Gold Coast and suburbia, the many action sequences (filmed in Queensland) are situated in Myanmar. An Australian Special Ops Squad is sent to track down a renegade officer, which brings them into contact with Rohingya refugees, the military forces, massacres of the locals, military arrests and torture. This serves as a significant reminder to audiences, and Australian audiences, of the persecution of the Rohingya and the migrations of hundreds of thousands to Bangladesh.

The film is even more topical with its presentation of PTSD – with an appeal before the final credits for more services to the military who have served but have experienced so much trauma. The experience of the special squad, a strictly secret mission, violent conflict with the local military, seeing the massacre of helpless, arrest and harsh torture, is shown graphically and enables the audience to understand and appreciate the trauma.

The focus of the story is on the leader of the squad, Seth (Josh McConville) who has been brought back to Australia in a severe state of depression, moments of hallucination, terrifying dreams. His liaison officer (Rena Owen) is military demanding, reminding him that the Army did not train members to be losers. We first see this officer arriving at a house delivering one of those letters concerning death. The recipient is Rebecca (Bonnie Sveen) the twin sister of one of the men in the squad. She is also a journalist, has visited Myanmar, confronts Seth.

She is angry, demanding answers. He is in the middle of his trauma, being advised to seek psychological help, shunned by his angry wife, trying to establish a relationship with his young daughter.

Gradually, the nature of the mission, the experience, is revealed to Rebecca and to the audience. She still has demands to know the truth about her brother who is listed as missing in action.

As we watch the story of the mission, the squad sent secretly to track down a renegade officer who has become involved in drug dealing in the area as well as a great deal of violence, we may be reminded of the core basic plot of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness which was at the centre of Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.

The post-traumatic stress experiences of Seth are severe and demanding – and have something of this kind of effect on the audience, forced to participate in the trauma, watching, puzzling, feeling, even tormented.

This is the second feature of the writer-director, Storm Ashwood (his previous film being the horror story, The School). It is an effective feature – and we can look forward to his further films probing contemporary issues.

Peter Malone MSC is an Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting.