Quigley Down Under

Matthew Quigley, an American sharpshooter, answers an advertisement from an Australian rancher because he can shoot at long range, and travels to the other side of the world. When he learns what the job is, that he is expected to shoot Aboriginal people, he goes to war with his employer. The film is not interested in cowboy heroism. It is interested in how ordinary colonial violence sounds: Marston explains it with the calm of a job interview, and nobody around him objects. The form carries the classic western template to another continent. Horse, desert and lone man are the same; the landscape and the victims are not. The script is older than the film. John Hill wrote the first draft in 1974, prompted by a Los Angeles Times piece about 1870s Australian advertisements seeking long-range riflemen. Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood were considered for the lead, and when production was due to start in 1980 McQueen was too ill and the project collapsed. It took another decade and Tom Selleck to get it made. Quigley's weapon is custom too: a single-shot 1874 Sharps rifle of about six kilos with a 34-inch barrel. Simon Wincer directed. Alan Rickman plays the rancher Marston and Laura San Giacomo plays Crazy Cora. Who it is for: viewers who like late westerns and Rickman playing a villain. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the Aboriginal characters to tell their own story. The film largely uses them as a matter of conscience for its white hero.