By Dov Kornits
Aussie actor Martin Dingle Wall (Underbelly, The Nothing Men, The Dry) mounts up for the western This Bloody Country, playing a relocated Australian gunfighter tasked with protecting a family of Mormon pioneers.
“He couldn’t afford Chris Hemsworth and Russell Crowe wasn’t available,” laughs local actor Martin Dingle Wall to FilmInk of This Bloody Country director Craig Packard, “so he just cast the net and said, ‘Let’s see what Australian actors are around in LA.’ I happened to be in Australia at the time, but the audition reached me and it went from there.”
Constantly back and forth between Australia and the US, Martin Dingle Wall is always ready to jump and move when the right role and project presents itself. An occasional producer (he was a driving force on the searing 2010 Aussie indie drama The Nothing Men) and busy actor, Wall scored his breakout role on Home And Away as the determined Flynn Saunders, and later delivered strong turns in TV series like Underbelly, Cypher, Satisfaction and Rescue Special Ops.
“I was trundling along in Australia,” Wall says. “Things were was ascending. I did Underbelly, which led to the network series Cops LAC, which was a lead role with Kate Richie. That went for one season, and got axed. After that, I thought, ‘Right, now’s the time.’ So I went to America and got lucky, man. I got the right manager, and got in the rooms. I booked Cypher, booked Happy Hunting, booked the movie Gun Shy with Antonio Banderas, came back to Australia, shot Strangerland with Nicole Kidman and Joseph Fiennes, and went back to America with those few things in my sack. And then I kept working over there.”
Now comes the lead role in writer/director Craig Packard’s This Bloody Country, a thoughtful western in which Wall straps on his six-guns and mounts up to play Ned Campbell, an Australian gunman in The Old West based on a true-life character who plays protector to a group of Mormon pioneers, most of whom are women and children. “He’s an ex-Pinkerton,” Wall explains of his man-of-action. “The church has paid him. He’s the only guy around who knows the terrain. He has to lead this Mormon family, but of course the patriarch sees him as a threat to his authority. It’s hostility and one-upmanship between him and the man he’s supposed to be working with. But my character just has to take care of the family. He has to say to this patriarch, ‘You don’t know what’s going on out here, man. You don’t get where you are. This place will kill you. It’s already tried!’ So I have to take over this man’s family and get them through this trial. And a forbidden love story also bubbles up with one of the downtrodden wives. There are all these forbidden breaches of code happening out on this frontier, which is just like Australia, mate…it’s just geared to kill you at every turn!”
The film’s low budget meant lots of location shooting, but that worked out just fine for Martin Dingle Wall. “We were out there,” the actor laughs. “We were in the high desert of Utah. We’d wrap for the day and we’d be dropped off at a little cabin with no water, no electricity, and only the scarcest of internet connection so I could talk to my son. You could hear the coyotes at two in the morning. We had gas lanterns. That is a dream scenario for me. You’ve got your Winchester repeated rifle and your boots with solid wooden heels. The sore throat, the dust you can’t wash off…that’s just the integration. Give me more of that! Let’s film for five weeks! Let’s go! I was like a pig in shit!”
Despite the dirt and dust, its evocative title, and western trimmings, This Bloody Country certainly has a lot more going on than just gunfights and genre-friendly posturing. “The director Craig Packard told me, ‘I’m not interested in just making a western. I’m interested in examining the psychology of people that had to survive in that environment. I don’t want to bypass the presence and power of women in the frontier either, because they’re the ones that are never looked at.’ He’s put two men at the forefront, but what holds the audience are these women, and what they’re going through, and how they respond to what’s happening around them. This film is driven by family, faith, love, survival, and forbidden attraction…it’s driven by things that aren’t textbook western. Craig has created something a bit different here, which has caught people off guard.”
And it’s caught people off guard to such an extent that This Bloody Country is now enjoying a level of success that certainly belies its low budget and lack of surrounding industry machinery. “It didn’t have a studio behind it,” Wall says of the film. “We all turned up and did our bit because we’re in love with it…we’re like drug addicts with our craft. And this is a real piece of cinema…it’s not going to give you the bang, bang, bang, but it turned out that an audience has just been waiting for it. The first reviews came in saying, ‘Thank God someone has made an emotionally intelligent movie that we can sit down and engage with.’ The reviews were great…people got it. In fact, people are grateful for it. And then just last week, we had a big moment. Amazon contacted us and said, ‘You guys are the number one most watched western we’ve got. You’re number four ranking in the most popular films. You’re trending, you’re holding, you’re in the top belt.’ And this is a film shot for less than $2 million.”
Those kind of rankings on Amazon’s streaming service certainly don’t hurt Martin Dingle Wall’s rankings either. “Well, I know that my arrow on IMDB is green and facing up,” the actor laughs. “I’ve had a few things come in, but since COVID, I’ve been busy writing a TV series. I’ve actually wandered off into the writing realm, which is a whole different discipline to screen acting. That’s where I’ve been for a year-and-a-half…just inside that. We’re in the very early stages of pre-production on that now. I’ve written myself a lead role and the idea is for it to be shot in the Central Australian desert. I’m taking care of that now.”
According to Dingle Wall, now is the right time to be diversifying. “The industry’s become the Wild West,” he says. “It’s like you are no longer just an actor. And fortunately, if you’re one of the handful that’s really got a story in them, you’re no longer just an actor. You’re a writer, you’re a producer…you can weaponise all these things. And if you want to, you can really take care of things for yourself. So as much as it’s all insane and these business models are all eating their own heads, it’s a pretty juicy era to be in storytelling. That’s the joy of my dance with it. I’m just perpetually motivated by this. If I’m lucky, I get cast in a film, and if I’m really lucky, I get cast in a lot of things. And if I’m really lucky, it goes to number one. That doesn’t hurt me with pitching my TV series. That’s just more currency for me.”
Caught between two countries, stretching himself across acting, writing and producing, and coping with the pressures of family life too, Martin Dingle Wall is dealing with a hectic, always bustling personal landscape of his own, beset with challenges, and many hills and valleys. “That’s the chaos and the beauty of this industry,” Walls says. “You never know what’s coming in. You just turn up, be grateful for the work, do the work, and leave it alone and go to the next one. Being the lead on This Bloody Country was great…being required on set every day was amazing. That’s all I want to do. I want to ride motorcycles, raise my son, love the right woman, and make movies and TV. I’m in the middle of it. Thank God…let’s go make another.”
This Bloody Country is streaming on Prime now. For much more on Martin Dingle Wall, head to his official website.
