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The Dictator

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Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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Hobby Farm (Film)

by Annette Basile | November 16, 2010 09:44 | Edited November 16, 2010 12:48

Well made and impressively performed, this fails to deliver the rewards expected of such emotionally tough-going material.

Set in a 1970s underworld, Hobby Farm occupies such sordid territory that its very subject matter makes it uninviting. Paul J. Murphy - who co-wrote the script with fledgling director Brad Diebert - is solid as Julian, a man who's just spent the last five years in jail as a favour to crime boss Senti (the evergreen Gerard Kennedy). Julian's first post-prison job is to look after the "hobby farm" - a den of iniquity on Sydney's outskirts where men drink, gamble and force themselves onto miserable east European sex slaves. ("Imagine you are picking flowers in an orchard," an older captive advises a younger terrified woman who's refusing to play the game, "it works for me.") Tormented by a disturbing childhood incident, (Julian's father, glimpsed in flashbacks, is played by the director), the toughened protagonist is sensitive to the women's plight and through them finds redemption.

 

Considering its meagre budget, Hobby Farm looks good, while some wordless scenes, heightened by an effective score, convey the women's fear and pain. The street-ready dialogue is real and the performances impressive - including Travis McMahon as an undercover cop, plus comic Vince Sorrenti, who's surprisingly believable in a straight dramatic bad guy role. But Hobby Farm's sense of time and place is off-key. This may be the 1970s, but it just looks like a bunch of blokes with vintage cars and bad fashion sense.

 

Filmed on the grounds of Goulburn's Kenmore Psychiatric Hospital, Hobby Farm doesn't end on a bleak note but the story itself is something of a downer. For a viewer to want to go inside this realistically portrayed world, there have to be serious rewards. While well made and well acted, Hobby Farm doesn't quite deliver.