Review by C.J. Bunce

A few years ago here at borg I reviewed 2018’s Mystery Road, an Australian television Western series about Outback indigenous Detective Jay Swan, played by Aaron Pedersen (The Gloaming) co-starring twice Oscar-nominated actor Judy Davis (A Passage to India, Ratched, Impromptu).  The first two seasons featured Pedersen, then went back in time with a younger actor for a third prequel season.  What you may have missed is the first appearance of Pedersen as Detective Swan five years earlier in 2013 in the critically acclaimed movie also titled Mystery Road.  That movie is now streaming here on Prime Video.  Winner of several awards in Australia, it co-stars The Lord of the Rings and Captain America: The First Avenger’s Hugo Weaving, plus an early appearance by his niece Samara Weaving (Scream VI, Ready or Not, Snake Eyes), Jack Thompson (Star Wars prequels, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil), True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten, Tony Barry (Harrow), and the man in seemingly every franchise, Bruce Spence (Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Matrix, Mad Max).  If you’re a fan of authentic classic Westerns in the vein of High Noon, you won’t want to miss it.

Fans of crime TV have seen the tropes, but they haven’t seen them this way.  Who did it better?  Gary Cooper or Aaron Pedersen?  We fortunately don’t have to answer that, but Pedersen was a wise choice for this role.  His authenticity as Detective Swan is almost palpable as a young cop returning home to his small Queensland town after training in the city.  His first case isn’t easy: The body of a young woman is found murdered in a culvert frequented by semi-truck traffic.  He must maneuver his past and those who know him as well as a deep schism between races.

Swan only breaks his steady demeanor whenever his daughter (played by Tricia Whitton) is brought into a conversation by a suspect.  And it’s the threat of safety for his family, a moment requiring confrontation as with Gary Cooper’s Marshall Will Kane in High Noon, that leads to the film’s explosive climax.  But Pedersen plays this slightly more cop, than Western, more Steve McQueen in Bullitt and Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry.  

This is a Western with a slow burn.  Swan uses his knowledge of the locals and his contacts to dig into the mystery.  Getting in his way is his sergeant, played by Tony Barry.  Samara Weaving plays the wife of a cop who died shortly after digging into the crime world infesting this small town.  Man of many characters, New Zealand-born Australian actor Bruce Spence plays the local coroner.  And Jack Charles is a great feature as Swan’s uncle.

Is Hugo Weaving’s older cop behind it all?  His informant gets in the way of Swan’s case early on, and he seems to have his fingers in everything in the town.

As Swan looks upon the indigenous community getting roughed up by other cops on patrol, you can see the fine wire he is walking.  White cops accuse him of turning on his own.  Even the indigenous local kids show him little respect.  But as viewers would find five years later in the series, Swan’s role is the long game.  Swan holds back any emotions like John Wayne in The Searchers–until he no longer can.

Suddenly he’s in the middle of a gunfight for his life, a gunfight that would look very different in the American West, yet it works as well in the sandy, sunburnt hills of the Outback.

The red herring is a good one, and the payoff is good, too.

Although the daughter would be re-cast for the series, Tasma Walton (Cleverman) plays Swan’s wife in both.  Pedersen starred in one more appearance as Swan, the 2016 movie Goldstone, which co-starred David Wenham (The Lord of the Rings, Iron Fist, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) and Pei-Pei Cheng (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Mulan).

The movie Mystery Road was a big score for quintuple threat Ivan Sen, who was writer, director, editor, cinematographer, and musical composer.  Usually a project for someone spread so thin doesn’t come off as such a seamless artistic experience.  His aerial shots clearly keep viewers involved with Swan’s movements about town.  Not many Westerns double as a crime thriller like this.  Not many thrillers handle marginalized peoples’ struggles, corruption, and community so well.

For fans of the Western genre and Australia, Mystery Road is streaming on Amazon Prime.