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John Hillcoat’s gritty, grimy and blood-drenched “western” paints a bleak, violent picture of the Australian outback in the 1880s. Guy Pearce plays Charlie Burns, the middle brother in a troika of violent outlaws who are accused of a heinous crime. When he is captured by British lawman Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone), Charlie is faced with the invidious proposition of the title: bring in the head of his elder brother Arthur (Danny Huston) or his younger sibling will hang. Screenwriter Nick Cave, the singer/songwriter who collaborated with Hillcoat on his equally nihilistic prison drama Ghosts… of The Civil Dead, paints this period of Australian history as an explosively violent struggle between an imperfect civilisation and outright anarchy. Winstone brilliantly demonstrates his twin capacities for sentiment and sudden violence as a man desperately trying to preserve a peaceful oasis for himself and his wife (Emily Watson), and there’s excellent support from Huston and John Hurt as a crazed bounty hunter. This is intense, brutal and memorable moviemaking.
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