Australia's Best Movie Magazine

Film reviews

Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

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

search the site

Enter search term:

newsletter

Enter your email address below to receive the weekly Filmink newsletter

Enter search term:

The Tall Man (Film)

by Joshua Blackman | November 14, 2011 13:15 | Edited November 14, 2011 13:16

It’s fascinating and sobering subject matter, and some of the revelations it makes are truly horrifying, but this still feels slightly strained as a feature length film.

This documentary speaks of a difficult subject with even-handed clarity - that of the suspicious death of an indigenous man while in police custody on Palm Island in northern Queensland. The Cameron Doomadgee case, which broke in 2004 and reoccurred in court twice since, was a scandal that prompted protests from indigenous groups who claimed that he was murdered by a police officer. The coroner's report, witnesses, and this film, seem to make it clear that the enigmatic Christopher Hurley did - probably unintentionally - kill Doomadgee, who was arrested for allegedly swearing at a police officer, but the reasons why are almost as complicated as the larger history of race relations in this country.

 

Director Tony Krawitz presents dozens of face-to-face interviews with witnesses, family members and lawyers involved in the case, combined with legal testimonies and present day footage of the beautiful but troubled Palm Island, which started out as a penal colony for "troublesome" Aborigines in the early 1900s. The largely indigenous community hasn't yet recovered from that settlement, and that the positions of power (police, doctors) are almost entirely white, just reinforces the old hierarchy. This power struggle is behind much of the current-day tension: the cops despise the locals for their propensity for domestic violence and unrest, while the locals detest the authorities for their oppression and lack of sympathy.

 

As fascinating and sobering as this subject is, the film itself feels more like a television documentary. Overlong at even eighty minutes, it would work even more effectively trimmed down to an easily-digestible hour. Still, Krawitz gets raw insight out of Doomadgee's former partner, Tracy Twaddle, and witness Roy Bramwell, and the revelation of police corruption is downright horrifying. If anything, more time could have been spent on that and the broader conspiracy to cover up the incident.