Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Bereamic Awesome Movie

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

johnnyboyz If you find yourself more gripped by The Square than you first thought you might be, then that is because it gets the crucial things right before it unleashes its spectacular tale of nihilist causality designed to amuse; entertain and gut-wrench in equal measure. The Square isn't an original film. Its central idea is along the lines of blackmail; doubles crosses and people in extra martial affairs trying to do one over the feminine participant's partner. However, it remembers to make us care about those involved to make it engaging; remembers to have us give a damn about what might happen to the folk it spends a good deal of time setting up before these various parties and people vie with one another over a large amount of money. The premise is, of course, enough to illicit groans from some people – every genre film ever made has the ability to do such a thing, but Nash Edgerton's film does what's crucial and nails that opening chapter in regards to its character relation dynamics for us to tune in and come to enjoy it to the degree we're supposed to. In spite of this potential to be unoriginal, I'll be damned if the day comes along whereby I don't enjoy a well-made thriller about a bag of cash and some people with the potential to be quite rotten scurrying around trying to end up with it. Veterans of another Australian relationships drama entitled "Lantana" will spy the inflection during The Square's opening sequence, a track down from a busy highway across a bridge constructed over a large river moves to encompass the unpleasant noises insects and bugs in the undergrowth produce before we focus on a truck housing two people making love. That idea of unpleasant things out of sight is here again – once more, not an original feat but one which infers a certain sense of this being an illegal rendez-vous out of the film's inferring they're 'hiding' from the mainstream flow. Completing the additional foul swoop, and alluding to a darker tone of comedy often dropped in amidst the grizzly-ness of what's beneath inner-suburban Australia, Edgerton will place two yapping mutts in a neighbouring vehicle at this small rest stop mirthfully reminding us that these two people are, indeed, 'dogging'.The two are Ray (Roberts) and Carla (van der Boom), Ray a man with a wife and Carla a woman with a husband. Ray works on a construction site charged with building a motel, the sort of location you might expect Ray and Carla to be sneaking off to in order to perpetuate their illicit romance. In spite of everything, Ray strikes us as a nice guy; someone who, we sense, deserves more in life than what he's got when we watch him verbally struck down at work by a foreman's retort to a pretty decent idea Ray has on the job at hand. Alas, he cannot seem to get a break in this regard. Set in a small Australian town divided by a river, each of their spouses are unaware of a romance which escalates into the penchant for theft and elope when, in true 50's Hollywood noir fashion, a large quantity of money comes Carla's way and Ray is swayed into going with a plan of hers. Before you roll your eyes enough to do yourself some serious damage, hear that he does and that we don't mind that he does because Edgerton grinds some serious drama out of a familiar idea featuring people we enjoy following. We wonder just how it is Carla picks her men; her incumbent partner is certainly a lot rougher than Ray and we're amused at how Carla's man's bulldog-inflected pet dog clashes with that of Ray's poodle. Much more affecting is how we observe Ray dine in front of a television with his wife, anonymously and blandly in what is a state of matrimony that's seen better days. It is Carla's husband Greg (Hayes) who obtains the cash in the first place, further still provoking Carla to get Ray to help take it from him before anyone can spot anything. The charm is in the film's resisting to go for a straight up good guys and villains-type scenario, with Greg as the bad guy and the central two as the lovers looking to go on the run. We don't brush these characters off as archetypes; indeed, we sense these people are human and might exist; we sense that if Carla was to ever go for an older man, she'd chose Ray's tall, wiry and softly spoken character. Additionally, we don't necessarily dislike Greg. If none of the above still doesn't convince you, take an amusing scene in a kitchen during a BBQ someone is hosting: Ray treads towards the fridge for a beer – "Don't you DARE pull out a can of Fosters" we scream at ourselves as the thing jolts open. The hand goes in, it comes back out again and that unmistakable blue inflection that makes up a can of Foster's is nowhere to be seen…. We sigh in relief and ease our way back into the scene again before the film proper – How nice to watch a thematic or an arc that's somewhat familiar where the people depicted within are a little more than just clichés.

Ben Larson One should always be aware of the Law of Unintended Consequences when they set out to commit a crime. You may have to live with more than you bargained for.Lovers of Double Indemnity will find the story familiar. Raymond (David Roberts) and his lover Carla (Claire van der Boom) plan to steal money and leave their partners. Things, of course, do not go smoothly.There are twists and turns aplenty in the noir film, and it keeps you wondering who is going to come up with the next one.Roberts was excellent and the film was extremely well done.One hopes Joel Edgerton writes more like this.

bob_meg As many people have rightfully pointed out, "The Square" shares more than a few similarities with the Coen Brothers' debut "Blood Simple." Both have a noirish sensibility, both feature mostly unknown actors on a relatively small budget, and the plot of both films is rife with characters, double-crosses, and freakish accidents and fatal misunderstandings that change the lives of everyone forever. Perhaps most importantly, both focus on a protagonist, unhappy with a dead-end situation in his life, but too trepidatious or apathetic to say either yes or no to adultery and larceny. And, as is the case in many of these real-life scenarios, the choice gets made for them who doth not decide, to ill effect.Ray (David Roberts)---interesting, that was the name of John Getz's character in Blood Simple, as well---is a building site manager who's on the take at work, casually dandling his mistress, when she (a fetching Clare Van Der Boom, who looks and acts a bit like a down-under version of Jenna Fisher) offers him a bag a cash her shady husband has been stashing. And from there, things get sticky."The Square" is also a perfect title: Sure, it describes the grid in the center of the construction site, but Ray is the REAL square in this crime drama: the term has been in use for years to mean a sort of decoy in a criminal operation. Sure, Ray's the "good guy" but some damn evil things seem to happen all around, and because, of what he doesn't do or does inadvertently.The film's play on misunderstandings and how perceptions are often erroneously informed makes it always interesting and fun to watch, and the acting is very above board as well. There are many gray characters in this piece, but the ones who are bad are REALLY bad (I'm thinking mostly of Anthony Hayes as Van Der Boom's greaser husband and Bill Hunter as Ray's bad-ass property boss).It will keep you guessing till the end and wanting more. It is often grim, very real, and unforgiving. A little like life.

PresidentForLife Unlike some rapturous reviewers, I don't get the appeal of this movie at all. It is violent, senseless, and then violent some more. Why is everyone in Australia heavily armed, except our hero? The performances are fine, but what good is that if the movie is too long and the plot hard to follow? If you want to see a coherent drama concerning a big bag of hot cash, rent "A Simple Plan" and call it good. (Length requirements constrain me to add that the movie concerns a married man and a married woman who want to run off together. She spots a stash of cash her husband has hidden in the attic, and they scheme to get it by - hiring an arsonist to burn the house down after she steals it! Unfortunately, that doesn't work out too well because the arsonist's girlfriend doesn't get to him in time to call the whole thing off, and the husband isn't fooled anyway. Meanwhile, hero has some cash flow problems of his own by taking a kickback at work. A character who threatens to expose him impales himself accidentally, but our hero feels compelled to bury the body secretly anyway. The two schemes of thievery are vainly interwoven as if they somehow share a parallel theme other than concerning stolen money, but the Edgertons just aren't that skilled at the loom.)