The Proposition (4 Stars)

A police captain who desperately wants to track down a ruthless killer offers a proposition to the killer’s outlaw brother. The deal is, that if he tracks down and turns in his eldest brother, a feared murderer and rapist living with a band of outlaws in a cave, he and their youngest brother will receive full pardons.

The Proposition is very much a period piece, with an almost hypnotic soundtrack, focusing on the struggle and sheer hopelessness of taming 19^th century Australia, with vicious, murderous psychopaths living out in the shadows of the wilderness, far beyond the capacities of the meager means of law men of the time to intercept them.

While I was watching this film, I was unsure for awhile as to whether it was about werewolves, or whether the werewolf was merely a metaphor used by some of the characters.

Ray Winstone and Emily Watson have great chemistry together in this film, and their marriage is one of the only beautiful things in what is otherwise a wasteland of cruelty and desperation. John Hurt plays a small, but fantastic role as a bounty hunter, and Richard Wilson, playing the youngest of the three brothers, gives and excellent performance.