Only a few days until Tomorrow: When The War Began opens officially across Australia!

Several reviews have popped recently, mostly from more impartial reviewers, and I thought I’d share a few of them with you.

Tomorrow: When The War Began by Matt’s Movie Reviews

Character and action blend to make a compelling tale of teens at Just War in Tomorrow, When the War Began.

As a group of friends glance at a crystal clear night sky, a succession of fighter jets from an unknown country pierce through the darkness, filling the air with jet fumes.

It is the thing of nightmares, especially in Australia, the “Lucky Country” which is supposedly immune to the notion of invasion. That delusion is shattered in a surreal scene where an Australian fighter plane is hounded by enemy aircraft and blown out of the sky.

Bearing witness to the impossible are a group of teens of varied ethnicity and faith, played by a talented group of young Aussie actors and one Brit in Rachel Hurd-Wood.

A weekend camping trip at a lush, hidden paradise within the deep bushland that surrounds their country farm community makes them oblivious to the carnage outside, as an invading army of Asian origin (China would be the best guess) has taken their and other communities under siege.

Cut off from the world (internet and mobile connection is kaput) and with nowhere to turn, these little Rambo’s decide to fight back Red Dawn style.

If the premise sounds familiar, that is because Tomorrow, When the War Began is based on the popular series of books written by John Marsden. It has long been a literary favourite for teens all over the world, and with such high expectation it is indeed that much more impressive that this film adaptation delivers.

Driving its success is writer/director Stuart Beattie, who has created a career writing screenplays for the likes of Michael Mann (Collateral) and Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl), and his time in Hollywood has been to the Australian film industry’s benefit.

Finally, a filmmaker has been given the funds and the material to create a genre piece with strong mainstream potential, and Beattie does not drop the ball delivering a well written, and well choreographed action movie with enough adolescent drama to keep things light in between the guerrilla warfare.

Ideas are also paramount, with the concept of Just War resonating through the action and emotions of its characters, who are faced with the implication that to kill is to live, and to defend is to declare war.

There are snags in its execution. Caitlin Stasey is not wholly convincing as Ellie, the leader of the teen troop, with stronger turns found in Phoebe Tonkin’s beauty queen Fiona, and Deniz Akdeniz bad boy Homer.

Also shaky is some of the CGI work that looks like it was still in post production.

Yet as an adaptation of a beloved novel and an action thriller driven by moral and philosophical ideas, Tomorrow, When the War Began is a winner despite some minor stumbles.

The possibility of a sequel is teased at its conclusion. If so, tomorrow will be worth waiting for.

Tomorrow When the War Began, may bring unintended consequences by mountain frog

This film, Tomorrow When the War Began, is the first in an intended series of three films, to be followed by a television series, depending on box office receipts.

It was a substantial investment for an Australian feature film, at $20 million, and its production values are generally excellent. DOP Ben Nott has done a superb job of capturing some of the beauty of Australia’s bush and mountains, alternating with that serenity, the fast paced action sequences, with gun fights, car chases, explosions and general mayhem.

Although there are a number of small technical criticisms I noted, this film still rises way above the average fair, and its 143 minutes duration literally flies past, leaving you a little disappointed for want of more.

I have not read the seven book novel series, written by John Marsden, which the film is based on, so I was seeing the film and judging it on its merits, and I know the youth, in particular, who are familiar with the books, will love the film, as will many older folk who do not know Marsden’s work.

The actors generally put in strong performances; however, there are a few awful character clichés which more than jar, which does disrupt one’s involvement momentarily. I have written a more in depth analysis, which does not contain plot or ending spoilers, but does partly describe some scenes for critical purposes, on my film review site. On other criticisms, some logic and laws of physics have been bent, for dramatic purposes which, in my opinion, detract from the effect.

Realism, if respected on every level, always impresses more. The Hollywood multi-angle multi shot of the same effect is cartoonish and helps to degrade a drama, rather than enhance it. This film does commit some sins, but it is head and shoulders above the usual Hollywood fair, in the action genre.

In closing, I recommend you see this film, for it reveals a, potentially, extremely contentious issue, regarding the invaders, which may have historical socio-political repercussions, more than any other Australian film before it, particularly throughout Asia.

This film will be remembered by many for a number of reasons.

It is definitely worth the price of the ticket!

Tomorrow, When the War Began movie review: on track to become an Aussie classic by Cinetology

Author John Marsden’s Australian invasion novel Tomorrow, When the War Began has been gobbled up like corn chips and adored by teens and young adults since it hit the shelves in the early 90’s.

The book generated record sales, six sequels, endless speculation about the nationality of the invaders (Marsden never named names) and now a slick big screen adaptation from Aussie writer/director Stuart Beattie, who has big budget bona fides as the writer of Michael Mann’s terrific one-night-from-hell LA thriller Collateral and a contributing scribe to Hollywood franchises such as the Pirates of the Caribbean series.

This marks Beattie’s first film as a director. There’s no doubt watching how his words have been shaped into showy multiplex movie’s has taught him some tricks of the trade over the years – particularly how to employ polished cinematography and maintain a cracking pace.

The story tracks a group of high school students from the small town of Wirrawee who go on a week-long camping trip to “Hell” – not the place with flames, pitchforks and Stan Zemanek but a beautiful remote location that looks like something straight out of a shampoo commercial.

Dozens of military planes fly over one night and when the young’uns return to town things have sure taken a turn for the worse: the dogs are dead, mum and dad are nowhere to be seen and the town is eerily silent. It’s been invaded by a foreign power, residents herded into a makeshift concentration camp. A couple of impromptu meeting later these (pimple free) pubescent peeps decide – natch – to grab some munitions and ta-ta take the power back.

For the record: yes, we see the invaders, and they’re obviously Asian. But the question of the invading country is skirted in the film, as it was in the book. When the characters discuss flags and nationalities, one chimes in with “what difference does a flag make?” which is nice way of avoiding the ethnicity elephant in the room.

There was never any mystery as to why the books were so successful. The story was written with Marsden’s unprepossessing style and mingled with elements akin to a high school student’s wet dream – the action-spangled p(l)ot of gold at the end of the elusive “learning can be fun” rainbow. Beattie knew there was never an excuse to make a boring movie.

He also would have known that a key challenge was to get the balance right between story and action, and that involves juggling the inevitable slabs of character exposition without prompting the audience to wriggle in their seats and cry out the cinematic equivalent of “are we there yet?”

Beattie does a sterling job maintaining an upbeat rhythm without dumbing the material down into slabs of inconsequential action. There are countless pace pick me ups: gun fights, explosions, background flashes of wartime activity and encounters with strangers, including a cameo from Colin Friels as a frazzled dentist (“you picked a helluva weekend to go camping!”) and some comedic relief from the town stoner (“either I’ve been smoking some really weird shit or it’s not your typical day in Wirrawee”).

The film looks great and the slick cinematography by Ben Nott (who also shot Daybreakers) is unexpectedly stylistic. For the soundtrack Beattie opts for a top 20 pastiche approach over a strong atmospheric score, using a smattering of popular Aussie songs largely as tools for scene transitions rather than audio nuance, which will irritate some viewers.

There was a clean-cut feel to Marsden’s writing, an uncluttered middle of the road style that feeds into the film – particularly in the dialogue – and probably always had to. However, Beattie’s handling is sassier and edgier than readers of the book will probably expect and he brings more than a hint of the risqué: a snippet of unexpected violence to illustrate in no uncertain terms that war is the stuff of nasty pasties; some spliff tokes from the stoner; a healthy amount of cleavage from the two pretty young female leads, etcetera. Just enough to make young viewers feel as if they’ve seem something slightly irreverent when in fact Tomorrow, When the War Began is ultimately inoffensive entertainment, just like the books.

Beattie nails the tone of the source material, even improves on it, notwithstanding moments when the movie spills into the kind of borderline cheesy hands-on-hips-staring–out-yonder-from-a-cliff-face moments that he spends much of the movie dodging, or attempting to. But Tomorrow, When the War Began will work with its target demographic and then some, and it’s set to join the book as a classic of Australian fiction.

There is one sly touch in which the characters beat the audience to the inevitable comparison between page and screen. The exchange takes place between two girls, one of whom is reading My Brilliant Career. What a horrible indictment on contemporary popular culture that such a literary choice almost breaks realism, but presumably Beattie cared too much about his characters to let them consume Twilight.

“Good book?”
“Better than the movie.”
“Books usually are.”

That’s the sort of self-reflexive wink wink touch that comes from a writer, not a director. It serves as a subtle reminder that Stuart Beattie is now qualified as both.