The Proposition

Fans of Nick Cave and his band, the Bad Seeds, recognize that Cave has something of an obsession with murder and the torment that so often leads to it. So it’s not so surprising that, with his first screenwriting effort, the Aussie rock icon should focus on some other bad seeds—the gunslingers and thugs who ran rough-shod through the Australian Outback in the 1880s. Cave was originally tapped to write the score for this Australian Western, but director John Hillcoat ended up asking him also to pen the script, given the narrative gifts that come through in his songs. The proposition of the title is this: Three brutish brothers stand accused of a bloody crime. One of them—played by Guy Pearce—is ordered to hunt down the brother regarded as the greatest threat, in order to save the life of the third. Gun fights, jail busts, and bloody scraps with Aborigines thereby ensue, in what is being hailed as a gorgeous and original film. www.landmarktheatres.com