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Blackrock

Threat advisory: Severe - Severe risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

When you're 17, scared, and alone, how do you choose?

When a 15-year-old girl is raped and murdered at a teenage surf club party, Blackrock turns into a town of hatred, shame and distrust. for 17-year-old Jared, the event tears him between loyalty and truth.

Selected for Sundance Film Festival 1997.

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Brilliance.

Imagine a film where reality invades the world. Teenagers and youths are people with ideas and hoes and beliefs. Adults are lost in their little worlds of self-deception. The pigs are bastards. Crime just happens. Heroes are lost in a haze of life.

Sound too poetic for a film about surf hoons from up the coast? Maybe, but as someone with something of a mis-spent youth to draw on, Blackrock knocks Home and away and Beverly Hills 90210 on their big fat pretensions.

The raw energy of Nick Enright's script, the hard edged locations, the actors, the emotions, are at times overwhelming. Laurence Breuls as Jared is just brilliant. Simon Lyndon as his mate and hero Ricco is almost perfect (perhaps two weeks too long in drama school).

My one complaint (and I alway makes sure I have at least one) is that the film was 15 seconds too long. The last 15 seconds. See it and you'll understand.

Security censorship classification

MA 15+ (Medium level violence, adult themes)

Surveillance time

90 minutes (1:30 hours)

Not for public release in Australia before date

Film: 1 May 1997