![]() ![]() Sometimes characters converse as if there’s vast valleys between them sometimes they cut right to the bone. The monochrome aesthetic is also a bit of a pathos-o-matic, helping the cast hit their plaintive notes. The film looks better the closer Sen’s cameras get to the ground – birds-eye drone shots, which the director has deployed before, losing their earthy lustre and becoming oddly mechanical-looking in black and white. ![]() This striking location, captured in Warwick Thornton’s vampire series Firebite, is presented by the multi-hyphenate Sen (also Limbo’s cinematographer, writer, editor and composer) in the aforementioned spartan-looking monochrome, which adds an extra layer of spareness to environments that already have a vast and empty feeling. Is it possible to maintain a circadian rhythm down there? Or is time itself stuck in limbo: never really day and never really night? In reality the central location is Coober Pedy – the bizarre South Australian town where citizens live in underground dugouts to escape the blistering heat. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning But Baker transcends stereotype, bringing sleepy-eyed and sorrowful gravitas, with lots of thousand-yard stares and a slow way of speaking, as if Hurley is aware that time moves differently in this part of the world. ![]() The addled cop is a bit of a trope: they may wrestle with the demon drink (like Aaron Pedersen in Goldstone), be afflicted by physical ailments (Brendan Cowell’s tinnitus-suffering constable in Noise) or have a traumatic, personal connection to the scene of the crime (Eric Bana in The Dry). The film is set in the titular – fictitious – opal mining town, where Hurley arrives to ask questions about the unsolved murder case of an Indigenous girl, Charlotte Hayes, 20 years before. At one point a child accurately observes that he looks more like a drug dealer than a member of the force. Simon Baker leads the cast as Travis Hurley, a tough, sorrowful, heroin-injecting detective with a buzzcut and a downbeat, Walter White-ish demeanour. ![]()
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