Binge-r #272: The Tourist + 1883
Wake in Fright: Jamie Dornan (The Irishman) in The Tourist
THE TOURIST
Streaming Service: Stan
Availability: All six episodes now streaming
The first episode of this outback thriller is going to win a lot of viewers over. It’s tight, twisty and streaked with the sardonic, as an Irish visitor (Jamie Dornan) to the outback comes off second best in a Duel with a vengeful semi-trailer and wakes in hospital with no memory but a growing realisation that someone wants him dead. His immediate quest to find his name and possibly clear it, provides existential dread, further danger, and a diner waitress, Luci (Shalom Brune-Franklin), who is quick to get entangled. The subsequent episodes deliver more of this, but it comes with a quirkiness that sometimes strains as you get an eccentric pursuer (Olafur Darri Olafsson), and a young probationary police officer, Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald), who becomes an unlikely travel partner for the capable amnesiac.
The main characters are all engaged in varying quests to figure out who they are (Helen has a monumentally aggravating fiancé, played by comedian Greg Larsen), but sometimes the mechanics of the plotting and the story’s momentum start to feel rubbery while the idiosyncrasies and character work unfold. That’s surprising, because the creators of this international co-production are Brits Harry and Jack Williams, whose track record is finely wrought mysteries such as The Missing and The Widow. They’ve tried a touch too much with the inky black humour here, when a stay alive in the moment drama might have proved better (albeit with less episodes). Dornan’s wild career – The Fall and 50 Shades of Grey – gets a solid new entry, but I’m hoping the last two episodes of The Tourist provide a bracing finale.
Straight Shooter: Sam Elliott (Shea Brennan) in 1883
1883 S1 (Paramount+, all 10 episodes now streaming): I have never bothered with Stan’s Yellowstone, an eventful Dallas in Montana drama starring Kevin Costner, but this prequel about how the powerful Dutton family came to the American west 140 years ago has got me watching. The appeal is contradictory: Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan (who previously wrote Hell and High Water and Sicario) has crafted a wildly expensive and impeccably crafted period western defined by brutal deaths, casual cruelty, and excessive violence. The first time we meet Civil War veteran Shea Brennan (a perfectly cast Sam Elliott), he’s contemplating suicide following a tragedy, but he decides to sign on as the trail boss for a wagon train of vulnerable German farmers planning to follow the Oregon Trail from Texas to the Pacific northwest. Joining them are the Dutton clan, parents James and Margaret (Tim McGraw and Faith Hill), and children including 17-year-old daughter Elsa (Isabel May), whose wondrous narration supplies the hope to this cursed trek. As a western it’s unyielding and fascinating – Lonesome Dove rewritten by Cormac McCarthy.
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
New on Netflix: Shot intermittently over 12 years, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014, 165 minutes) is a fascinating drama about time and influence as divorced Texan parents (Ethan Hawke and an outstanding Patricia Arquette) raise their son to maturity; Secretary (2002, 111 minutes) is an intimate S&M black comedy about a domineering lawyer (James Spader) and submissive new hire (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who ignite a mutual kink.
New on SBS on Demand: Doused in supernatural suggestion, New Orleans atmospherics, and an erotic thriller’s heat, Alan Parker’s Angel Heart (1987, 109 minutes) is an uneasy period noir about a 1950s private eye (Mickey Rourke) hired by a mysterious businessman (Robert De Niro) to track down a singer who absconded on a contract, that is overly ripe but rich to the eye.
New on Stan: Shot in Melbourne, Upgrade (2018, 100 minutes) is a deceptive sci-fi action-thriller about control and revenge from Leigh Whannell (The Invisible Man) with Logan Marshall-Green as a quadriplegic empowered by a tech billionaire; with Jake Gyllenhaal as doppelgangers who engage, Enemy (2013, 91 minutes) is a murky, obsessive study of identity that’s very different from director Denis Villeneuve’s subsequent blockbusters.
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