morrison-dylan-fan Recently catching up with a terrific thread on the IMDb Film Noir board,I noticed an IMDb member give a very good review,for an over looked Neo-Noir film from Australlia.Being intrigued by the sound of the movie,and having also enjoyed the great 1987 Ozploitation film Dark Age,I decided that it would be the perfect time to take a look at a Neo- Noir world from down under.The plot:Getting a job as a Foreman for the building of a brand new leisure resort,Raymond Yale starts to plan on ways which he can get extra "benefits" for the building of the resort.Holding secret discussions with lead construction work Barney, Ray soon begins to devise a plan that will secretly create "kickbacks" during the construction work,which will lead to him getting a nice bundle of extra cash on the side at the end.Despite his plans on how to get hold of the cash that is dangling in front of his eyes,Ray finds any "spark" in his life completely fade away when he returns to the suburban home that he lives in with his wife,whose "spark" for Ray has also gone a long while ago.Feeling that his marriage is beyond repair,Ray decides to start an affair with a woman called Carla Smith,who lives on the opposite side of a rive near Yale's house.Feeling a sense of danger and excitement that he has not had in ages,Ray decides to ignore the fact that Smith is married to a well known,ruthless local gangster called Greg "Smithy" Smith,and to instead start building a deep relationship with Carla,whilst continuing to make sure that no one else in the city catches on to what they are secretly up to.Keeping a good distance away from her husband so that he does not catch her spying on him,Carla sees Smithy secretly hide a duffel bag which seems to contain a huge amount of cash from a bank robbery that Greg has recently committed.Rushing to tell Ray about her thrilling discovery,Smith is left deeply disappointed when Yale tells her that they should just leave "Smithy" money alone and just wait for his "kickbacks" to get started.Not being willing at all to let the topic drop,Carla eventually gets Ray to agree on setting up a robbery for Greg's hidden money,which will inadvertently give them the very worst "kickback" that they ever could have imagined…View on the film:For their slowly unravelling,tightly coiled screenplay,writers Matthew Dabner and Joel Edgerton, (whose brother Nash directs this terrific film) initially make the first half of the film a moody suburban Drama,as Raymond Yale, (played by a great David Roberts,who expertly shows Ray transform from being an extremely private individual,to someone who is willing to go to murky limits to keep the pile of cash under wraps) is shown to be completely dissatisfied in the direction that his life has taken.With Dabner and Edgerton having Ray display more affection for Femme Fatale Carla Smith, (played by the great,cunning Claire van Der Boom) than he ever does for his family and friends.Using the suburban setting as the main focus of the movie for the first half,Dabner and Edgerton slowly have the Noir side of the film brilliantly rise up to the suffice,as Ray begins to get a dangerous,paranoid doubt in his mind over which of his family and friends are actually showing their true selves,whist others prepare to increase the tension and stab him in the back,which leads to the film ending on a pure,sudden Black Comedy note.Despite this being his first ever feature film directing debut,Nash Edgerton display a strong style which suggests a bright future hopefully laying ahead of him,as the scenes of Ray getting an increasing feeling of fear,having Edgerton cleverly use a close-up "floating" camera to fully display Ray's dangerous "up in the air" mood,whilst using the second half of the movie,to create a number of really excellent, tense "betrayal" scenes that show Ray and Carla's cunning plans completely burn down.

bob_meg As many people have rightfully pointed out, "The Square" shares more than a few similarities with the Coen Brothers' debut "Blood Simple." Both have a noirish sensibility, both feature mostly unknown actors on a relatively small budget, and the plot of both films is rife with characters, double-crosses, and freakish accidents and fatal misunderstandings that change the lives of everyone forever. Perhaps most importantly, both focus on a protagonist, unhappy with a dead-end situation in his life, but too trepidatious or apathetic to say either yes or no to adultery and larceny. And, as is the case in many of these real-life scenarios, the choice gets made for them who doth not decide, to ill effect.Ray (David Roberts)---interesting, that was the name of John Getz's character in Blood Simple, as well---is a building site manager who's on the take at work, casually dandling his mistress, when she (a fetching Clare Van Der Boom, who looks and acts a bit like a down-under version of Jenna Fisher) offers him a bag a cash her shady husband has been stashing. And from there, things get sticky."The Square" is also a perfect title: Sure, it describes the grid in the center of the construction site, but Ray is the REAL square in this crime drama: the term has been in use for years to mean a sort of decoy in a criminal operation. Sure, Ray's the "good guy" but some damn evil things seem to happen all around, and because, of what he doesn't do or does inadvertently.The film's play on misunderstandings and how perceptions are often erroneously informed makes it always interesting and fun to watch, and the acting is very above board as well. There are many gray characters in this piece, but the ones who are bad are REALLY bad (I'm thinking mostly of Anthony Hayes as Van Der Boom's greaser husband and Bill Hunter as Ray's bad-ass property boss).It will keep you guessing till the end and wanting more. It is often grim, very real, and unforgiving. A little like life.

Aristides-2 When the dog got killed I laughed, soft-hearted dog lover that I am, because the Dog was standing in for the Square. (And what a dog! Able to race through neighborhoods, swim a river and then run through yet another neighborhood to find his cutie!) Come to think of it, the two owners of the dogs, in the opening sequence, while hooking up, had both dogs in the same car. Maybe the director's cut will open on the two dogs having a go of it and then pan over to Ray and Carla getting it on. But seriously..... By not showing a compelling reason, other than sex, in even one scene, I had increasing difficulty over Ray's willingness to dump everything for the sake of his sex mate. And jumping to the end of the movie, after a badly staged scene of Carla getting killed.....and the camera-on-a-crane showing a disconsolate and bloody Ray walking down the street away from the carnage, one is supposed to say 'tsk-tsk' poor guy. But I didn't have any sympathy for either Carla or Ray at that point. How do you sympathize with characters who have little character and who you don't like?Other more technical annoyances were a couple of impenetrable accents and also poor casting choices which made it confusing to know who was who.Why did Lenny steal the generator? And what did he have on Ray?It also wasn't enough to kill, in a road accident, the suspicious foreman but the writers had to also place an infant in the vehicle.After a break in, wouldn't the obvious thing to happen, with all the materials lying around, be the hiring of a security guard?And pray tell how did the boss-of-bosses and the law know about the blackmailing? More important, how were they going to resolve the serious breach of the law that they were involved in?There really were more silly things gathering along the way but you get the idea.....

tigerfish50 "The Square" opens with two parked cars at a scenic overlook. In one of them, two agitated dogs observe the other vehicle where their respective owners, Ray and Carla, are engaging in some steamy extra-marital gymnastics. When Carla returns home from her tryst, she spots her rough diamond husband surreptitiously hiding a bag of cash in the ceiling of their washroom, whereupon she conceives the idea to steal the money and run off with her paramour to begin a new life together. Construction site manager Ray declines to go along with her scheme at first, anticipating a boatload of trouble fouling up his sweet kickback scam at work, but Carla's alluring charms soon prove too strong a temptation. The lovers hire themselves a dubious partner, lash together a leaky plan and set it in motion, only to meet with a firestorm of foul-ups, suspicion and terror."The Square" shares many themes and motifs with "Body Heat" and "Blood Simple". The chief differences are its gritty realism and fast pacing - and it also boasts an extensive cast of support roles that provide a bewildering array of possibilities for misunderstandings and betrayal among the various conspirators, victims and bystanders as their lives spiral out of control. By the time the dust has cleared at the conclusion, one begins to wonder if the phrase 'ratcheting up the tension' might not have been coined for this film. Nash Edgerton directs his brother Joel's tight script with verve, and extracts intense and believable performances from his actors. It all adds up to an impressive modern Indie film noir.