TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

LeonLouisRicci Mood, Atmosphere, and Dread. How's that for a Supernatural Movie Template. The Aussie Director Peter Weir (now entrenched in Hollywood with critical acclaim) uses His Once Limited Resources to Display Artistic Flourishes with Enhanced Realism that Never Allows the SFX or the Sensationalism of the Story's Surrealism to Draw Distracting Attention to Itself.It's an Eeriie and Ominous and at times Chilling Clash of Cultures. The Stoic Portrayal from Richard Chamberlain as a Confused and Confounded Lawyer Bombarded with a Bizarre murder Case and Dreams and Experiences He Struggles to Comprehend is Fine. His Family is Literally Drowned out of the Movie by the Power of Aboriginal Mind Control and His Inability to Understand.There are Images to Impress and a Very Creepy Soundtrack where both Music and Sound Effects are Unique and Important to the Movie's Tone. The Native Aboriginal "Actors" are Used for Effective Enhancement and the Polar Opposite of Chamberlain's Blonde Hair, Blue Eyed Caucasian Race.The Climax in the Cave is Haunting and may Drag On a bit too Long, but that is a Nit-Pick because it does Look Literally like a Haunted Cave. The Titled Last Wave is Shown as a Minimalist Make Up Your Own Mind Ending.

moonspinner55 In Australia, four Aborigine men stand accused of causing the death of, or perhaps murdering, one of their own; a white taxation lawyer becomes involved, but he can't seem to break through to the secretive defendants--nor can he shake the feeling that something is terribly amiss in his own life, which is juxtaposed by the freaky-wet weather. Would-be apocalyptic mishmash from director and co-writer Peter Weir begins with a marvelously spooky sequence in the schoolyard (where hailstones fall from a cloudless sky), yet the eerie beauty of that opening is allowed to dribble away in a melodramatic study of class and race guilt--the wealthy and powerful whites versus the poor black Aboriginals--underscored with supernatural flourishes. Weir wants to be profound and serious, so there's nothing intrinsically mysterious or exciting about the lawyer's prophetic dreams, nor his relationships with the Aborigine tribe or his wife and daughters. A potentially fascinating situation is kept ominously mundane, while lead actor Richard Chamberlain drifts through in an anxious fog. *1/2 from ****

bobt145 In 1977, I doubt if audiences were as open to a film like this as they might be today. Assaulted in the 1970s with such fare as "Rosemary's Baby" it would have been natural to reject this without giving it a chance.Thankfully, DVDs are forever.Weir creates a film of foreign concepts, foreign to us but at home to an Aboringine still in touch with tribal ways.Hail stones the size of bricks arrive out of a clear blue sky. Muddy rain falls on Sydney. The sky is filled with rainbows and strange southern lights in the middle of the day.If you surrender yourself to the Aborigine concept of dream time, it makes perfect sense. What is surprising is to find that an Australian (Richard Chamberlain) has been forecast as part of this end of cycle.Weir used real tribal people and gave them a kind of supervisory approval for the script to be as authentic as possible.If you let your mind absorb the film without defense systems, it packs a worthwhile punch.

Robert J. Maxwell I remember seeing this when it was released, in a theater in Palo Alto, and not expecting much. I mean -- an Australian movie? Chips Rafferty would be in it somewhere. But it finally got to me. Here's a scene. Richard Chamberlain is sitting cross legged on the floor of a shabby apartment in Sidney, facing an Australian aborigine elder named Charlie.Chamberlain: "You were outside my house last night. You frightened my wife. Who are you?" And Charlie at a deliberate pace replies, "Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?. . . . Are you a fish? Are you a snake? Are you a man? . . . . Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?" It's a stunning scene, shot all in close ups, with Chamberlain's blandly handsome face filling the screen in opposition to Charlie's black, broad-nosed, unyielding bearded visage.The two guys couldn't be more different and this film is the story of how Chamberlain accidentally stumbles from his humdrum lawyerly existence into the inexplicable, almost unspeakable, mysteries of Charlie's world.I don't think I'll go on much about the plot. It's kind of an apocalyptic tale. But I must say, whoever did the research on Australian aboriginal belief systems should get an A plus. They've got everything in here, from pointing the bone to the dream time, a kind of parallel universe in which dreams are real. It's an extremely spooky movie without any musical stings or splendiferous special effects. Charly's world simply begins to intrude into Chamberlain's dreams, for reasons never made entirely clear.If there's a problem with the script, that's it. Nothing is ever made entirely clear. Does Chamberlain, who seems to have some extraordinary rapport with the aborigines, die in the last wave? Do the aborigines? Does the entirety of Sidney? The basic premise is a little hard to accept too, though granted that this is a fantasy. The aborigines are invested with the kind of spiritual power that Americans bestow on American Indians, whereas the fact is that mythology is mythology and while one may be more complex or satisfying -- more elegant and beautiful, if you like -- mythology is still an attempt to transcend an ordinary, demanding, and sometimes disappointing physical existence. The mysticism of Charlie is more convincing that the miracles of Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments," but they're brothers under the skin.But I don't care about that. Taken as a film, this one is pretty good, and it's especially important for marking the celebrity of the director, Peter Weir, and the Australian film industry. This was the first of a great wave of films from the antipodes, some of them raucous, like "Mad Max," and some subtle and dramatic, like "Lantana." I like Weir's stuff, which resembles Nicholas Roeg's in being pregnant with subliminal dread. Try "Picnic at Hanging Rock" for an example of how to make a truly chilling movie with not a drop of blood.