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Rating: PG-13
Director: Simon Wincer
Writers: John Hill
Stars: Tom Selleck, Laura San Giacomo, Alan Rickman
Release Date: October 19, 1990 (United States)
Run time: 1 hour, 59 minutes
THE PLOT:
via wiki:
Matthew Quigley is an American cowboy with a specially modified rifle with which he can shoot accurately at extraordinary distances. Seeing a newspaper advertisement that asks for a man with his special talent, he answers using just four words: “M. Quigley 900 yards”, written on a copy of the advertisement that is punctured by six closely spaced bullet holes.
When he arrives in Australia, he gets into a fight with employees of the man who hired him as they try to force “Crazy Cora” onto their wagon. After he identifies himself, he is taken to the station of Elliot Marston, who informs Quigley his sharpshooting skills will be used to eradicate the increasingly elusive Aboriginal Australians. Quigley turns down the offer and throws Marston out of his own house. When the Aboriginal manservant knocks Quigley over the head, Marston’s men beat him and Cora unconscious and dump them in the Outback with no water and little chance of survival. However, they are rescued by Aboriginal Australians.
Cora now reveals that she comes from Texas. When her home was attacked by Comanches, she hid in the root cellar and accidentally suffocated her child while trying to prevent him from crying. Her husband had then put her alone on a ship to Australia. Now Cora consistently calls Quigley by her husband’s name (Roy), much to his annoyance.
When Marston’s men attack the Aboriginal Australians who helped them, Quigley kills three. Escaping on a single horse, they encounter more of the men driving Aboriginal Australians over a cliff. Quigley drives them off with his deadly shooting and Cora rescues an orphaned baby she finds among the dead. Leaving Cora and the infant in the desert with food and water, Quigley rides alone to a nearby town. There he obtains new ammunition from a local German gunsmith, who hates Marston for his murdering ways. Quigley learns as well that he has become a legendary hero among the Aboriginal Australians.
Marston’s men are also in town and recognize Quigley’s saddle. When they attack, cornering him in a burning building, he escapes through a skylight and kills all but one of them. The injured survivor is sent back to say Quigley will be following. But first Quigley returns to Cora and the baby, which she has just saved from an attack by dingoes. She had tried to stop that child from crying too, but finally let him make as much noise as he liked as she killed the animals using a revolver that Quigley had left for her. Back in town, Cora gives the baby to Aboriginal Australians trading there after Quigley tells her that she (Cora) has a right to happiness.
Next morning, Quigley rides away to confront Marston at his station. At first he shoots the defenders from his location in the hills, but is eventually shot in the leg and captured by Marston’s last two men. Marston, who has noticed that Quigley only ever carries a rifle, decides to give him a lesson in the “quick-draw” style of gunfighting. However, Marston and his men are beaten to the draw by Quigley; as Marston lies dying, Quigley refers to an earlier conversation, telling him, “I said I never had much use for one [a revolver]; never said I didn’t know how to use it.”
Marston’s servant comes out of the house and gives Quigley his rifle back. The servant then walks away from the ranch, stripping off his western-style clothing as he goes. An army troop now arrives to arrest Quigley, until they notice the surrounding hills are lined with Aboriginal Australians and decide to withdraw. Later Quigley and Cora book a passage back to America in the name of Cora’s husband, since Quigley is still wanted. On the wharf, she reminds him that he once told her that she had to say two words before he could make love to her. Smiling broadly, she calls him “Matthew Quigley” and the two embrace.
MY REVIEW:
Quigley Down Under is a really interesting film. It’s partially a traditional Western, set in Australia. It’s partially a more modern and more balanced commentary on the somewhat parallel fighting that happened between Native Americans, and Australian Aboriginal populations and white settlers in both locations. It’s partially gut-punch serious on occasion. It’s also slapstick comedy on occasion. Throughout all of that, though, it kind of works due to its great acting performances.
It’s hard to believe in a movie with Alan Rickman that someone else stole the show, but that’s what happened here. Laura San Giacomo was outstanding as “Crazy Cora” whether the scene asked her to play the character as comedically unhinged side or if the plot asked her to deliver a deeply moving scene wherein she explains the horrifying backstory that unhinged her. Cora retelling how she accidentally smothered her son, trying to keep him quiet, while hiding from the Comanches was gut-wrenchingly sad. The scene wherein she later saves the Aboriginal baby from wild dogs is awesome and serves as a redemption arc. Cora is the story’s comedic relief AND its emotional punch. That’s hard to pull off.
Rickman was an excellent and layered bad guy. It’s a tricky job to play a character you simultaneously feel sympathy for and also grow to hate, but he achieves that with his Elliott Marston performance. Marston was shaped by the slaughter of his mother, at the hands of Australia’s Aboriginal people. The bitterness and hatred from that part of the character’s life comes through in the performance, yet Marston is not sympathetic, either. He’s clearly become evil.
Tom Selleck is great in this role, too, and his job in the performance is mostly to be solid and to let everyone around him shine. He succeeds in that. Quigley is kind of a “tough American, with a perfect moral compass, who can handle anything and anyone” cutout. Selleck excels in roles where he needs to project a sense of unshakeable solidness and he does that well in this film, too. The biggest flaw in the character, if there is a flaw, is that by starting the film with a fully formed Quigley, and then letting everyone around him shine, you don’t really develop a deep interest in Quigley himself. The thing that was good for the movie was not good for a modern sensibility of franchising.
When we finally meet Aboriginal people in the film, the depiction is kind. They aren’t unthinking brutal people. They care for Quigley and Cora when the two were left to die in the desert. We see a friendly familiar environment, with warm people and children laughing. In short, the movie does not forget to remind the audience that these are human beings (a fact sometimes lost in the storytelling of traditional Westerns from earlier decades.) The film also does not portray them as entirely innocent people, either. The ultimate conflict just looks like two groups of very human people, both of whom commit horrible violence against each other, but with one of them just having the upper hand militarily.
The basic plot is mostly good, with a great character arc for Cora in particular, though the ending is somewhat spoiled by the way Rickman’s Marston monologues instead of just finishing Quigley off, when he has a chance. It didn’t ruin the movie for me but I thought a little more cleverness in the writing room might have given us a better ending.
I loved the vibe of the movie, both in its cinematography and its musical score. I also love some great gunfight and horse chase choreography sequences, which this film provides. Quigley has the sound and feel of a traditional Western while providing a look that feels fresh. I’d guess that in 1990, when Westerns had been out of style for a while, that was the goal and to that end, Quigley succeeds.
Overall, I definitely enjoyed this movie more than I thought I would. If you’re a fan of Westerns, I recommend it.
