Directed by:
David MichôdCinematography:
Natasha BraierComposer:
Antony PartosCast:
Guy Pearce, Robert Pattinson, Scoot McNairy, Nash Edgerton, David Field, Scott Perry, Tawanda Manyimo, Jamie Fallon, Gillian Jones, Richard Green (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
Set in the near future, the world of The Rover is one where mankind's greed and excesses have pushed civilization to the breaking point. With society in decline, the rule of law has disintegrated and life is cheap. Hardened loner Eric (Pearce) travels the desolate towns and roads of the Australian outback. When a brutal gang of thieves steals his car and only remaining possession, they leave behind the wounded Rey (Pattinson) in their wake. Forcing Rey to help track the gang, Eric gives chase. Determined beyond reason, unrelenting in the pursuit of his prey, Eric will go to any lengths to take back the one thing that matters to him. Animal Kingdom established Michôd as a master of brooding, slow-burning tension. (A24)
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Reviews (8)
Michôd doesn’t make things much easier for the viewer and without any explanation he follows Guy Pearce and his retarded partner (Pattison finally finds his feet as an actor and as a village idiot is entertaining and completely natural) in the hunt for a stolen car, heading daringly toward the twisted finale. The rosy future is just roads and sand or an ugly human caricature with a gun. The first half hour before the main characters meet makes watching more difficult. Many will find it terribly boring, but I quite liked this naturalistic road movie.
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After my great concern, this ended up up being a very solid and slow-moving post-apocalyptic thriller with a very pissed-off Guy Pearce and a convincing performance by Robert Pattinson. I liked the occasional brutality and the host of weird inhabitants. These Final Hours was handily outclassed by The Rover, hence I'm taking out one star. 65%
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With the atmosphere of its Australian outback in a realistic (i.e. non-fantasy) post-apocalyptic form with a lot of bleak social goings-on, The Rover is a superbly engaging thriller. Furthermore, I really like these reticent opuses in which we get to know the characters just a bit at a time. But the more sophisticated The Rover gets, the more futile it seems in some of its would-be philosophical dialogue, and the more unsatisfying its ending becomes. It’s as if it admitted that it was shit (and considered that to be its creative strength).
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A slower and less functional affair than, for example, The Road (though similarly inhospitable, dirty, raw), its biggest flaw is that it wants to be occasionally cynical and deliberately far-fetched, but it doesn't really work. Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson are surprisingly work, but otherwise, this bizarre post-apocalyptic road movie is average and not innovative or entertaining in any way.
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The main anti-hero, Guy Pearce, races his way through post-apocalyptic Australia following a stolen car and is assisted by a mentally ill Robert Pattinson. If he at least uttered a few words at the beginning and explained how important this car is to him, the whole plot would immediately cease to exist. The pace is slow and there is barely an hour of actual plot in the film, but somehow it was dragged it out to almost double the runtime. Pattinson's character is much more interesting than Pearson's, and even Pattinson's performance is better. Pearce just frowns the entire time and the viewer wonders why he is doing what he is doing. I probably wouldn't recommend the film to post-apocalyptic fans either, because if a headline didn't appear at the beginning explaining that the film took place ten years after an unidentified catastrophe, I wouldn't even realize that it was supposed to be post-apocalyptic.
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