Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Eric Bana, Genevieve O’Reilly, Kier O’Donnell, John Polson, Julia Blake, Bruce Spence, William Zappa, Matt Nable, James Frenchville, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Joe Klocek, BeBe Bettencourt, Claude Scott-Mitchell, Sam Corlett, Miranda Tapsell, Daniel Frederiksen, Eddie Baroo, Renee Lim, Martin Dingle Wall, Francine McAsey, Dawn Klingberg, Nick Farnell, Rosanna Lockhart Tommy Nable, Ryder Hudson, Maude Davey, Audrey Moore, Jarvis Mitchell.

There may be no way to tell an original story involving murder in today’s complicated, perhaps even saturated world; in the end they all boil down to a series of connections in which, it is to be hoped, the perpetrator is caught and given the damnation of society, or if we are feeling in the mood for the deliciously dark, seeing them evade the law and return in another form of media somewhere down the line.

If there is no novel way to tell a tale of murder, then the subject should always deserve a perfectly satisfying explanation behind the reasons behind the execution and taking of a life.

Directed by Robert Connolly and based on the novel by Jane Harper, The Dry is such a tale that with certain elements altered could see the story stand in any part of the world and the result would be praised for its delicate weaving of intimacy and cold harsh reality over jealousy and financial desperation.

The fact that The Dry makes direct use of the plight facing many in the world, access to rainwater and the changing face of the planet due to climate change, is enough of a backdrop to aid the film in its pursuit bringing the truth to light. The flashback scenes in which Eric Bana’s young teenage high school friends meet and amuse themselves at the local creek show the pain of memory when you return to an area after twenty years and find that the creek, like former happy times, has run dry and bitter, that everything that the river once supported in life has died, become barren and still.

Eric Bana arguably does not get the appreciation for his performances in his career, but in The Dry he wears the troubles he is placed under in his guise as a Federal Agent, and former suspect in another murder decades before, superbly and with great confidence.

It is though, the backdrop that steals the film, the depth of drought that has been inflicted on this part of Australia is astronomical and devastating to the local people and the environment as a whole. It asks the question of survival, of how long can secrets remain buried when the landscape eventually reveals all.

The Dry won’t be up for awards in the usual way, but in this case, it doesn’t matter, what is truly at stake is that the story has been told faithfully, carefully, completely, and for the that to have been so intricately pursued means the film stands out, that the film hammers home the ability to place the act of murder on an ecological scale. Ian D. Hall