The silent protagonist is becoming something of an Australian film staple. Last year it was James Frecheville’s passenger in Animal Kingdom. This year we have Lucas Pittaway as Jamie Vlassakis, whom you may remember as one of the men convicted in the Snowtown murders.
As with any anti-coming-of-age movie, Jamie remains passive and quiet throughout the majority of the movie and this shtick is beginning to wear thin. On the flipside, Antipodean cinema is shouting about something larger than just these isolated cases. Their naturalistic crime films reveal a society not afraid to glance disparaging looks at itself and Snowtown is an interesting, if not ground-breaking, addition to the canon. The main problem, and perhaps the only problem, is how Snowtown feels derivative of all the movies that inspired it.
