Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

appushiva The movie shows the racism exists in Australia, and the subsequent humanity shown by fellow persons. The movie is having intense emotional characters which are delight to watch. Spectacular camera showing the wilderness of Australia and background score treats us worth watching.A different movie from the usual movies. The songs in the movie are noteworthy and makes us to stay with the tracker in the journey. I seen the movie in Kuwait during the "Australian film festival-may 2007". Hats off for the director to take a bold theme about racism. A movie with a difference. We hope by seeing this type of movies let people be kind and love with their house hold servants and in workplace

meredithconnie I wanted to like this film more than I did - I wanted to be able to rave about it unreservedly, but I couldn't.First, I loved: David Gulpilil's performance. Such subtle contempt - almost as subtle as the way he actually tracks the landscape. This is an expression that should be seen more often in Australian cinema, just as there should be more opportunities for actors such as Gulpilil to shine. Secondly, I loved the paintings. At moments of transformation or violence (or transformation through violence - three words that sum up the history of the Australian continent) we were shown a still photograph of powerful, colorful paintings that were obviously (I hope! - I couldn't find a credit for them) by Aboriginal artists.On the down side, the white actors were not allowed a great deal of subtlety, which was a real shame. In particular, Gary Sweet's character was so one dimensional as to be a little annoying, and I am not sure if this was the writing or the performance. Where was the fear behind the arrogance? Where was the hardness rather than blankness? I know that this was an opportunity for the story of The Tracker to shine, but that is no reason to not have well balanced performances (and writing) for the white characters also - or the story begins to lose its power and punch.So, on balance, the performance of Gulpilil and the power of the story wins out (also probably motivated by the collective guilty conscience of all Australians) over the one dimensional white characters. A great companion piece to 'Rabbit Proof Fence'.

dwirish Okay, this movie has an interesting and gripping plot that can easily be done from start to finish in about half-an-hour. David Gulpilil is his usual, wonderful self, and carries this film. He plays a tracker, as part of a 1920's manhunt, led by a brutish territorial policeman, a rookie, and an older man. Gulpilil, although a free civilian, is treated more like a prisoner, eventually getting chained to the police commander, who doesn't trust any aboriginals.The commander orders a massacre of innocent aborigines, spews all sorts of racist comments on how Aborigines are murderous animals that cannot be trusted, and bullies all of his companions, even killing a wounded man just so the mission will not be slowed down. Eventually, the harsh Australian outback gets the best of them, and Gulpilil performs an act of frontier justice that is really satisfying when it comes.My only complaint about this movie is that it is padded out to 90 minutes by endless montages of the team walking through the outback. The scenes are accompanies by the same couple of songs about the suffering of Aborigines, which we hear over and over again, because there are a lot of slow, walking montages. The actual dialog and drama in this film, as I said previously, would only take half-an-hour if these montages were eliminated. This really makes the film slow and boring.However, the film is not unbearable, and actually has good drama, if you are patient. The character-study is well done, and the issues of racism and justice are explored very eloquently. The ending is very predictable, but still manages to have a surprise twist to it. The movie is worth seeing, but only if you have the patience. As I said, it's very padded with long montages that may bore many people.

Howard Schumann In 2002, Philip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence attacked the Australian government's policy of forcibly removing mixed race Aborigines from their families, sending them to government camps to be sold as servants, converted to Christianity, and eventually assimilated into white society. Just released on DVD and set six years earlier in 1922, Australian Indie director Rolf de Heer's The Tracker is a parable that also explores racism in Australia but on an even darker level, reflecting, according to de Heer, the practices and attitudes of that era towards the Aboriginal people. As three white men and an Aboriginal tracker set out on horseback to search for a black fugitive (Noel Wilton) accused of killing a white woman, the search through the stunning landscape of the Flinders Ranges becomes an exercise in savagery that raises questions about genocide.The travelers in the search party are nameless and referred to only as The Fanatic (Gary Sweet), The Follower (Damon Gameau), and The Veteran (stuntman Grant Page). They are characters who are both individuals and archetypes who seem to represent racial discrimination and its passive acceptance. The Fanatic is the pompous police officer who is shown as repulsively intolerant of blacks and an individual that will not hesitate to kill. The Follower is his young and innocent assistant who is startled by The Fanatic's relentless racism yet too inexperienced to make a move. The Veteran is an old timer who will not challenge authority.In The Tracker, De Heer employs two effective and original touches. One is the use of ten original songs composed by Graham Tardif, with lyrics by de Heer, and performed by Archie Roach, an Aboriginal singer who sounds like Tom Waits. Like the Neil Young score in Jim Jarmusch's subversive Western, Dead Man, the continual music can be intrusive but it creates a mood of solemnity. In another device, de Heer cuts away from scenes of violence to show still shots of Peter Coad paintings done in a simple primitive style. The raw emotion of Roach's songs and Coad's expressive artwork establish a record of the horror and allow us to relate to the mythic quality of the drama.The Tracker plays the part of a fool saying to the officer "Yes, Boss. Okay Boss" yet, like Feste in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, he is a knowing fool, a man of humor and irony and an instinctive intelligence about the natural world, its spirits and its sacred places. When The Fanatic tells him to show The Follower the signs he is following, he points to one stone in a field of thousands saying, "Dis stone in the wrong place, belong over here", underneath almost dry, he gone couple of hours." revealing knowledge of the place of every stone. We know that The Tracker, though outwardly subservient, is the one who is really in charge and that the search party would be lost without him. As The Fanatic forces The Follower and The Veteran to participate in murder, the groundwork is laid for revenge and retribution.The Tracker is a beautiful and powerful film that bears witness to the time when there was no talk of Aboriginal reconciliation and no hope for it. Damon Gameau shows great promise as the young man who has developed that rare quality called conscience and we identify with his strength of character. The highlight performance of the film, however, is that of charismatic native actor David Gulpilul. He portrays a man of simple dignity, not a "noble savage" or a faithful "Jacky Jacky" figure necessary to white dominance of the frontier but simply a man who has a profound sense of the world around him. Through him de Heer allows us to glimpse the possibility of establishing a true multi-racial society where people respect each other as equals.