The
whole honesty thing does not seem to be working out for an Australian veteran
driving cross country for a job interview.
He tries to do the right thing with the briefcase full of cash he finds
at the site of an accident, but the local cop is a bit on the dodgy side. It turns out he has issues, largely revolving
around his wife Jina in Craig Lahiff’s Swerve
(trailer
here), which
opens this Friday in New York.
Jina
will walk away from the crash unscathed, but the other party will be leaving
feet first. Considering he had just
pulled off his own murder-double cross, karma certainly came back around for the
drug dealer quickly. However, it is a
safe bet someone will come looking for the case of dirty money Colin, the
innocent bystander, turns over to Frank, the local law, after driving the
strangely composed Jina home. As a
fellow veteran, Frank insists on putting Colin up at his place, which leads to
the awkward realization Jina is the copper’s wife.
Needless
to say, it is not a happy marriage. Both
husband and wife appear to be hatching schemes against each other that will
start to involve the stash of cash in Frank’s jail cell. Colin will try to
avoid getting entangled in their drama, but yeah right, good luck with that.
Anyone
who has seen Body Heat or The Postman Always Rings Twice will have
a pretty idea what twists and turns lay ahead, except Lahiff’s screenplay is relatively
demur by the standards of sexually charged thrillers. In fact, it is a modest film in many ways,
seemingly mindful it has not reinvented any cinematic conventions. Yet, its thriller mechanics are pretty solid
and all three sides of the central noir triangle have above average presence.
While
the entire cast (even the smaller supporting figures) is well known in
Australia, Jason Clarke will be the most recognizable to American audiences
from Zero Dark Thirty. He does the swaggering small town crooked cop
well, playing his problematic nature more in terms of erratic recklessness than
outright evil. Emma Booth looks more like a girl next door than a femme fatale,
but she vamps it up in style. Rounding
out the trio, David Lyons makes a reasonably credible everyman and a refreshingly
sympathetic on-screen portrayal of an Iraq War veteran (even if Clarke’s Frank
is considerably less so).
