Broken Highway

A ship approaches the coast of Australia. A few sailors pass the time playing cards. The young, attractive Angel is the smartest of them all, but he falls out with Tatts, who is a bad loser. When Angel unexpectedly inherits an old farm in Queensland, Tatts the enemy follows suit.

COMMENTARY
''You start off thinking life is a strait line a big highway. But it gets broken all over the place.''
Before the sailor Max dies, his young protege Angel makes a promise to look up the place where Max grew up in Honeyville, Queensland. A place that resembles Paradise according to Max, with ''water and a forest filled with tiny yellow flowers''. When he gets there Angel is supposed to deliver a parcel to a man who Max usually refers to as ''The Dead Man''. He is the reason for Max's highway being broken years ago. Max was angry and of same age as Angel when he became a sailor.
Angel puts on his inherited American cowboy boots and goes ashore. Before dealing with his own life, he will stick to his promise to Max.
The Australian feature film debutant Laurie Mcinnes, who directed the film and wrote the screenplay, wanted to make Broken Highway a tribute to American film noir. This is the reason for using one of the dominating themes within the classic film
noir movies: the unsettled past. And with traditional devices such as hard lighting, unnatural shadows, insecurity, jilted love, a dusty portrait and a hero who doesn't know what's what, she captures the right atmosphere, style or - maybe even better - the essence of film noir. Mcinnes has understood the words of the director and scriptwriter Paul Schrader when he defined film noir in an analysis (Film Comment, spring 1972): ''how is always more important than what''.
When Angel arrives in Honeyville he runs into a few eccentric individuals: Wilson the fisherman, ''The Dead Man'' and the beautiful Catherine. This is no paradise but a ghost town, filled with car wrecks and memories. Without knowing it, Angel reopens old wounds, which once again begin to fester among the people of Honeyville.
Angel's past finally catches up with him, and he learns the difference between running away or hiding, park or continue to travel on life's winding road. ':'
Mari Edman

Medverkande
Aden Young, Claudia Karvan: Producent
Richard Mason: Manus
Laurie McInnes: Foto
Steve Mason: Talat språk
English