Didn’t expect this to be so good. Three girls escape from a kind of Aboriginal school of correction to travel 1500 miles across Australia back to their mum. Kenneth Branagh plays “Mr Devil” (Neville) sending police, trackers, anyone he can find, to catch them. It’s mostly very serious in its execution – one moment in particular towards the end, when Molly Craig laments, “I lost one,” brought tears to my eyes in the same way a similar moment at the end of Schindler’s List always does (“I could’ve done more …”). There are some wonderful lighter moments, though, that reminded me in a way of Spielberg’s Catch Me if You Can – the sheer, almost tragicomic, incompetence of the people trying to catch the girls, the slowness of communication at the time, the extremely limited resources, etc. Peter Gabriel’s atmospheric score, the powerful performances of the girls, and sweeping photography complete this gem I’ll definitely watch again.

Agh, P.S. forgot to add this but it needs to be mentioned. The one thing I didn’t like about this movie … some of the titles during the movie, and all the end credits, are in a font which either is, or dangerously resembles, Comic Sans – aka The Worst Font In The World Ever. Whoever was responsible should never be allowed near a computer again, lol.

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