DVD Reviews

Red Hill – Blu-ray Review

By Frankie Dees Feb 14, 2011, 15:54 GMT

Constable Shane Cooper (Ryan Kwanten, TV\'s "True Blood") arrives in the small town of Red Hill in search of a quieter life. But, on Cooper\'s first day with the Red Hill Police Department, a convicted murderer escapes from prison and heads straight for Red Hill to kill the men who put him there. One by one, the townsmen fall until Cooper discovers the shocking truth about the convict, and must ...more

If theatrical B-pictures were still around - y’know, pay for John Wayne but stick around for Randolph Scott (gotta get the most out of that dime) - then ‘Red Hill’ would fit that B-picture mold nicely. As contemp Westerns go, it’s no ‘No Country for Old Men,’ but this Aussie pic gets the job done.

It’s the first-time feature for writer/director Patrick Hughes who formerly specialized in commercials and short-films and he predictably shows a stronger eye for visuals and technical proficiency than storytelling.

But ‘Red Hill’ also reflects that refreshing down under signature of not feeling like it needs to rush. Like another recent Australian exploitation pic, ‘The Horseman’, the movie takes its time and isn’t cut like a music video. Something the American B-movie equivalent would no doubt fall prey to.

So we meet a young cop, Shane Cooper (Ryan Kwanten of ‘True Blood’), arriving on his first day on the job in the small community of Red Hill, in the Victorian Australian highlands country. Moving from the city to allow a stress-free environment for his pregnant wife who suffered from a miscarry in the past, Cooper doesn’t expect much and is indeed met with a police station with a horse grazing in front.

After meeting your usual mix of yokel locals, he finally meets his boss, the old curmudgeon ‘Old Bill’ Jones (Steve Bisley) who is immediately suspicious of why a big-city kid would want to transfer to this one-horse town.

And after some quick introductions, the movie gets down to business with news that a murderer convict ‘Jimmy’ Conway (Tom E. Lewis, ‘The Proposition’) has escaped from a maximum security prison and has unfinished business to settle in the appropriately named Red Hill.

It seems old Bill was the cop that put Jimmy away and Bill rightly predicts he is going to come back for revenge and, in pure Wyatt Earp fashion, “bring Hell with him”. So a ragtag group of locals is assembled for defense and Bill assigns a plan to protect the town; a plan that fails miserably. But even as Jimmy rides into town murdering seemingly without discretion, he spares Shane’s life and reveals that maybe things are not quite as black and white as they seem.

‘Red Hill’ is not going to win any awards for originality or breathing new life into an old genre but does succeed in delivering what it set out to do i.e. some well-produced violence and mayhem.

I do wish there was a bit more meat on the dialogue and character bones particularly considering that there was a capable cast to handle it but it still entertained on its own limited terms.

The film is presented with a 1080p 2.40 encode that does a solid job representing the sparse, wide-vista landscapes of Red Hill. It’s a dark movie so thankfully black levels are handled well and detail also comes across nicely. All in all, this might be a relatively low-budget movie but it looks damn near as good as a Coen Bros. movie.

The 5.1 DTS-HD Master Aud track also delivers more bang for your buck than you might have expected. One sour note is the complete lack of special features other than some previews and BD-Live connectivity.

For genre fans, I think ‘Red Hill’ is worth checking out. It won’t amaze you but it does deliver some solid exploitation action and will fit the bill nicely on low-expectation Wednesday.

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