VividSimon Simply Perfect

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Leofwine_draca QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER is a straightforward Australian western starring journeyman hero Tom Selleck as an American gunslinger who arrives in the rural outback in order to take a new job working for rich landowner Alan Rickman. Selleck's skill is with a super-powered rifle which can hit targets over 1,200 yards away.The problem with this film is its predictability. It's obvious from the outset that Rickman will be the stock villain of the piece and so it transpires. Rickman was going through a string of villainous turns after his appearance in DIE HARD in 1988 but is rather subdued in this film and was much better in the following year's ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES in a pure pantomime performance. He was the main reason I tuned in, anyway. Cult favourite Roger Ward plays a henchman alongside a young and ginger Ben Mendelsohn, a Hollywood treasure these days.Inevitably this film deals with racism in the treatment of Aborigines by the white settlers. The scenes with the Aboriginal characters are among the best in the movie and there are some pretty shocking violent moments in a film which otherwise has a TV movie feel to it. Selleck falls foul of the bad guys but you just know he'll get revenge come the stock climax. One interesting thing about the production is its depiction of mental illness, something that writers and producers usually shy away from, but it's handled quite sensitively here.

Samiam3 You ever heard of a Western in the East?. Quigley Down Under takes us to a corner of the world that is about as far as you can get from where Westerns are traditionally set. When the opening credits kick off, we are in Colorado. When they end, we are on the coast of Western Australia. The one taking the journey is Mathew Quigley, a renowned sharp shooter who has been hired by cattle rancher Elliot Marsten to help take care of a dingo problem. On the evening of his arrival at the Marstn ranch, Quigley finds out that he was hired in a lie. It is not dingos that Marsten wants dead, his real intentions have to do with his grudge against the local aboriginals. Embarrassed and infuriated, Quiqly declines the offer quite blatantly, (and by blatantly I mean with physical means) Marsten orders his goons to dump Quigly in the middle of the desert and let the heat kill him. With the help of the Aboriginals, he survives and he teams up with them to fight Marsten. Also on Quigley's side, is a bizarre little woman called Cora who has followed him all the way from the docks thinking that Quigley is her long lost love (she addresses him as Roy)Quigley Down Under manages to be a stable entertainment, but it is not without problem. The plot is schematic and uninventive, and some parts are not properly thought out. Cora in particular, is a clumsy creation. Her character motivation is so poorly presented that when I first saw the movie, I didn't know whether I was supposed to think she was crazy or selfish, or just dumb. The truth about Cora is revealed a little too late in the story. As a villain, Marston is close to cardboard, and there is no great sense of menace to him, but Alan Rickman as an actor is smart enough to do him a little justice. As for Quigley, he's just a cowboy and Tom Selleck is just a cowboy actor, so there is no major problem there.I wouldn't say that this is a memorable film, but it is not every day that you see a western in Australia, and it does make a difference. Just because the story is six thousand miles from America, doesn't mean the film isn't worth watching if Western is your kind of genre. It offers everything one would expect from a western, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more.

winner55 The low scoring of this movie at IMDb only reminds us: It wasn't the traditional Western that exhausted itself in the later 1960s/ early 1970s, it was the audience.This is an old-school traditional Western that happens to be set in Australia. The story, cinematography, music, pacing, characterizations, dialog, all are reminiscent of those we came to expect from Hawks, Hathaway, Sturgis. Yet there is no attempt to slavishly imitate the work of such past masters of the genre, but to add to the genre using a cinema vocabulary they would easily have recognized and appreciated.It's quite alright to say, 'traditional Westerns are not my cup or tea,' but it is not appropriate to slam a genre film for being true to its genre. And this sweeping adventure story is so true to its genre, if one didn't know when this was made or who these actors were, one could easily think it a product of the late 1950s or early 1960s, the last golden age of the traditional Western, the era of Rio Bravo, the Magnificent Seven, The Sons of Katie Elder, The River of No Return. While not strictly realistic, it presents a world that is three dimensionally realized - The heat is real, the wind is real, the old houses look like they've been standing for years, the people inhabiting this world are flesh and blood.One can easily imagine John Wayne speaking Tom Selleck's lines, but Selleck does an admirable job speaking them, and finds his own voice doing so. The rest of the cast is excellent as well. Since this is a traditional Western, some of the actors are stuck playing stereotypes, but as did their '50s-'60s counterparts, they work hard to bring these alive, to add the quirks that give them individuality, enough so to move the story along in fine dramatic fashion.And I think it a fine genre story, filled with wonder, suspense, thrills, drama, romance, humor. Pretty much the 'complete package' we came to expect Westerns to deliver back in their last golden age.We often say, "they don't make them like they used to." Well, here! They did it! They made one like they used to! Instead of complaining we should celebrate.

bkoganbing The sad thing about Quigley Down Under is that had this been done thirty years earlier the film would have warranted a major release the way a John Wayne or a James Stewart western would have had. Personally when I look at Tom Selleck and the way he plays the title character, I think James Garner. Selleck plays Matthew Quigley in the same dry, laconic manner that Garner patented.This western is about as southwest as you can get without dealing with penguins and icebergs. Selleck has come to western Australia in answer to an advertisement by a local rancher requiring a skilled marksman with a rifle. He takes the three month voyage from San Francisco and arrives at Alan Rickman's local Ponderosa. Remember this is Australia, a place settled by convict labor. On Rickman's spread it's mostly Scotch and Irish. But Rickman's problem isn't with them, it's with the aborigines.Which brings us to why he wants Selleck's services with a long rifle. Essentially he wants Selleck to hunt them down and kill them at a distance, a bit of ethnic cleansing. Fighting Indians was up close and personal at times. But just shooting people down like game, rubs Selleck the wrong way. He tells Rickman no with vigor. And that vigorous no gets Selleck and Laura San Giacomo a woman not playing with a full deck beaten up and thrown out in the outback with no means of survival. Of course they survive and we learn a lot about San Giacomo. The reason for her insanity, it's more of a defense mechanism to keep out the world, because she's done something terrible that her conscience won't leave alone. It's a beautiful performance, probably the acting highlight of Quigley Down Under.Of course there's plenty of action to satisfy any western fan on any continent. Alan Rickman is an especially loathsome villain, he makes his Sheriff of Nottingham in Kevin Costner's Robin Hood film look like a Girl Scout.And the aborigines do learn to appreciate Selleck and the payback he exacts. They come through for him at critical times in the film.Tom Selleck is a perfectly cast western hero, the kind I used to spend Saturday afternoon's watching.