Southern. Director Mike Newell; Producer Andrew Brown; Screenplay Andrew Brown; Camera Gary Hansen; Editor Peter Hollywood; Music Richard Hartley; Art Director Kai Hawkins
Jack Thompson
Carol Burns
Dennis Lill
Donna Akersten
Martyn Sanderson
Marshall Napier
Story revolves around Stan (Jack Thompson) and Dorothy Graham (Carol Burns), gun-happy dairy farmers who by 1941 have become ostracized from their neighbors in the isolated, close-knit New Zealand town of Kowhiterangi, mainly due to their own paranoia.
A gunpoint confrontation with two neighbors forces until now patient constable Ted Best (Dennis Lill) to confiscate Thompson's rifle, backed by a trio of fellow officers. When the gendarmes invade Thompson's farmhouse, his last refuge from a world of his own making, the inevitable violence ensues. Thompson then flees into the bush, and more will die before an amateurish manhunt reaches its inevitable conclusion.
Direction by Mike Newell stands out for conveying more meaning with pictures than words, though the film [from the book Manhunt: The Story of Stanley Graham by Howard Willis] stumbles somewhat through the narrative until the carnage begins.
Thompson turns in an okay performance, and he's clearly better in the early scenes when his character is still a semi-rational being. The actor seems stretched thin once his mainspring snaps.
(Color) Available on VHS. Extract of a review from 1982. Running time: 105 MIN.
Contact Variety Staff at
news@variety.com