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Released 30th October 2009
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If debut writer/director Steven Kastrissios needed a forum to vent some deep-seated inner rage, he picked a challenging one in cinema. The revenge movie has been done and done to death may times before. Although The Horseman is raw and brutal, it is also quite a ballsy portrayal of pure and unadulterated revenge that challenges our preconceptions and ethics, rather than leading its avenger (and us) along a bloody road to near self-destruction, then salvation. It not only questions what would we do in such an emotive situation if the shoe was on the other foot, but it also attempts to show shades of grey in most of its scenarios and character representations, rather than displaying the standard black-and-white found in many revenge slashers of past. It is an Australian revenge movie with a heart - if such can co-exist?
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Peter Marshall as its barbarous lead gives a riveting performance as distressed and grieving Dad, Christian, who loses a daughter in the seediest of circumstances. Without Marshall’s ample talent and testosterone-fuelled presence - a hallmark of many an antipodean production with the prominent, gritty and often inarticulate Alpha male, this film would surely have not seen the light of day. Marshall as Christian constantly upsets the viewer’s alliance as he struggles with the compassionate side of his being, adding dimension to an otherwise mindless ‘human killing machine’. The character is given space to explore this, not only in his encounters with young and vulnerable hitchhiker Alice, commendably played by newcomer Caroline Marohasy, who is around his daughter’s age, but also in some of the encounters with the people involved in his daughter’s death along the way, with some surprising outcomes.
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Kastrissios’s first attempt is to be commended, demonstrating that he has mastered the revenge genre, without showing the full titillating gore of the acts that his lead carries out - just a lot of claret splattering and off-screen suggestion. It is highly effective and intense film-making. Kastrissios wisely keeps it somewhat ‘entertaining’ by lacing it with that Aussie sardonic wit and ’screw you’ attitude that results in an exhausting choreography of shocking and surreal imagery that prompts a nervous snigger to come out in many places. Christian’s actions are kept almost ‘cartoonish’ to allow us to be truly repulsed by the true villains of the piece at the end.
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If revenge is a dish best served cold then Kastrissios’s first cinematic venture, The Horseman, is merely the cold meat appetiser to a thrilling main course of future films to come, providing he sticks with the genre and develops it as his own, and keeps his characters interesting by giving them more depth and purpose than the genre tends to allow.
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By Lisa Keddie
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Synopsis
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Christian, a divorced father and white collar businessman grieves over the complicated death of his daughter. When a video arrives anonymously in the mail, featuring his daughter heavily intoxicated and mistreated, Christian sets out on a reckless journey to find answers. Fuelled by rage and sorrow, the death toll quickly rises as he uncovers an ugly truth. Along the way he meets Alice, a young runaway not unlike his daughter and a fragile friendship begins to unfold.
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Film Facts
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Official site: http://www.thehorsemanfilm.com/
UK Release Date: 30th October 2009
Director: Steven Kastrissios
Writer: Steven Kastrissios
Cast: Peter Marshall (‘Christian’), Caroline Marohasy (‘Alice’), Brad McMurray (‘Derek’), Jack Henry (‘Finn’), Evert McQueen (‘Jim’), Christopher Sommers (‘Pauly’), Hannah Levien (‘Jesse’), Robyn Moore (‘Irene’)
Distributor: Kaleidoscope
Certificate: 18
Run-time: 94 mins
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Video on Real.com
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Trailer:
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