I don’t know whether to credit the film or blame it on a day of watching three movies with a lunch of cold empanadas & caramel corn, but the Proposition [siff] blew me away. In all fairness, the movie — a dazzling Australian Western starring Guy Pearce, Emily Watson, and Ray Winstone — probably bears the lion’s share of the responsibility for my stumbling blinking into the daylight in a state of mild disorientation.

The film, written by Nick Cave, opens with bullets striking metal siding and making cinematic swiss cheese of the shack where two outlaw brothers stage a last stand against the police. Although there are occasional pauses for you to catch your breath, the intensity doesn’t really let up for the remaining hundred minutes. When the dust settles, Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) faces two shackled brothers and offers the title’s proposition. Neither of them is the chief law enforcement target — that honor goes to the sociopathic oldest brother, who recently masterminded a grisly rape & murder. If Charlie (Guy Pearce) agrees to hunt him down, his kid brother will be spared the noose. More a demand than a proposition, really. And he has only ten days.

As the cowering fourteen-year-old brother is carted into town in a metal cage (the better for the angry public to throw stones), Charlie rides off into the stunningly-photographed Outback. On the way to his brother’s isolated cave lair, he encounters a drunken Darwin-hating bounty hunter and Aborigines not particularly thrilled about British ‘civilizing’ ambitions. Back at home, the Captain’s lonely wife (a glowing Emily Watson) tends roses behind a white picket fence mourning her friend’s death and her own childlessness while he faces pressure from a slimy administrator and crushing doubt about their methods.

The Proposition is exceedingly and non-stylistically violent. There is gruesome brutality, silhouettes cast against stunning backdrops, and deliriously shot horseback rides across the desert. The actors are in top form, making this story about loyalty, responsibility, and justice compulsively watchable.

(screenings on 26 & 28 May)