TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Tetrady not as good as all the hype

Btexxamar I like Black Panther, but I didn't like this movie.

GetPapa Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

wes-connors A crushing hailstorm in Sydney, Australia is bad enough to injure schoolchildren. Heavy rains continue while successful lawyer Richard Chamberlain (as David Burton) dines with his wife Olivia Hamnett (as Annie) and two little daughters. Upstairs, their bathtub overflows, causing water to run down the stairway. The taps seem to have turned on by themselves. The rains continue to slam down on residents as Mr. Chamberlain agrees to defend five Aborigines (native Australians) accused of drowning a man...Chamberlain is startled upon meeting one of his five wayward clients, eerie David Gulpilil (as Chris Lee), who previously appeared to him in a dream or vision. When even more mysterious Nandjiwarra Amagula (as Charlie) appears, the plot thickens. The rain turns darker..."The Last Wave" is an interesting take on the Sumerian "Flood Story" re-told in tales of Gilgamesh and Noah. It seems appropriate that a fourth flood (by one count, anyway) should herald an Apocalypse. Although story gets washed away in hocus pocus; it is thought-provoking, well directed by Peter Weir, and beautifully photographed by Russell Boyd. You could probably come up with several better endings; a simple re-editing of what is there would be more satisfying and less confusing.******* The Last Wave (11/5/77) Peter Weir ~ Richard Chamberlain, Olivia Hamnett, David Gulpilil, Nandjiwarra Amagula

dfox79 I saw this film yesterday at my local independent cinema. Both its main man, Chamberlain, and the director Weir are unknown to me although I gather from looking around here that both have had pretty illustrious careers.I won't revisit the plot. Lots of other people have already done that. Suffice to say, the film's main strength, for me, was its unsettling ambiance. Much of that has to do with Chamberlain's unfathomable persona and vaguely alien looks. The electronica soundtrack adds to the mood. The script is spartan, with room to breathe, which further adds to the unsettling tone.The special effects are as simplistic as you'd expect from an Australian film made at the back end of the 70s.As someone else has mentioned, the climax "wave" probably suffers as a consequence of budgetary limitations.

Robert J. Maxwell I remember seeing this when it was released, in a theater in Palo Alto, and not expecting much. I mean -- an Australian movie? Chips Rafferty would be in it somewhere. But it finally got to me. Here's a scene. Richard Chamberlain is sitting cross legged on the floor of a shabby apartment in Sidney, facing an Australian aborigine elder named Charlie.Chamberlain: "You were outside my house last night. You frightened my wife. Who are you?" And Charlie at a deliberate pace replies, "Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?. . . . Are you a fish? Are you a snake? Are you a man? . . . . Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?" It's a stunning scene, shot all in close ups, with Chamberlain's blandly handsome face filling the screen in opposition to Charlie's black, broad-nosed, unyielding bearded visage.The two guys couldn't be more different and this film is the story of how Chamberlain accidentally stumbles from his humdrum lawyerly existence into the inexplicable, almost unspeakable, mysteries of Charlie's world.I don't think I'll go on much about the plot. It's kind of an apocalyptic tale. But I must say, whoever did the research on Australian aboriginal belief systems should get an A plus. They've got everything in here, from pointing the bone to the dream time, a kind of parallel universe in which dreams are real. It's an extremely spooky movie without any musical stings or splendiferous special effects. Charly's world simply begins to intrude into Chamberlain's dreams, for reasons never made entirely clear.If there's a problem with the script, that's it. Nothing is ever made entirely clear. Does Chamberlain, who seems to have some extraordinary rapport with the aborigines, die in the last wave? Do the aborigines? Does the entirety of Sidney? The basic premise is a little hard to accept too, though granted that this is a fantasy. The aborigines are invested with the kind of spiritual power that Americans bestow on American Indians, whereas the fact is that mythology is mythology and while one may be more complex or satisfying -- more elegant and beautiful, if you like -- mythology is still an attempt to transcend an ordinary, demanding, and sometimes disappointing physical existence. The mysticism of Charlie is more convincing that the miracles of Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments," but they're brothers under the skin.But I don't care about that. Taken as a film, this one is pretty good, and it's especially important for marking the celebrity of the director, Peter Weir, and the Australian film industry. This was the first of a great wave of films from the antipodes, some of them raucous, like "Mad Max," and some subtle and dramatic, like "Lantana." I like Weir's stuff, which resembles Nicholas Roeg's in being pregnant with subliminal dread. Try "Picnic at Hanging Rock" for an example of how to make a truly chilling movie with not a drop of blood.

ctomvelu-1 THE LAST WAVE is never going to win over the mainstream audience. It is a slow-moving but fascinating film for those who are willing to go along with it. An Australian properties lawyer is asked to take on the case of five aborigines accused in the murder of one of their own. All sorts of portents and omens soon pop up, as the man's death involves a tribal issue that was not meant for white man's court, and pretty soon the lawyer is having trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy. It looks like the end of the world may be at hand, and he and the aborigines may know this but no one else does. Richard Chamberlain as the lawyer is at his peak here. David Guptil, a familiar face from several other Australian flicks and a decent actor, is one of the five aborigines on trial. THE LAST WAVE is simply not for everyone, anymore than is MAGNOLIA (both happen to have strange things falling from the sky). Check it out on a slow Saturday night.