rutal. Menacing. Bizarre. Bloody. Violent. John Hillcoat’s “The Proposition” is all of these and more. Each of the characters that pervade this stylishly macabre Australian Western could also don those adjectives with relish. For a film about justice, revenge, freedom, and the importance of family, set in the unforgiving desert landscape of a familiar yet foreign Old West, it’s certainly populated by scariness and grittiness – and an uncompromising realism.

Set in 19th century Australia, Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) is a stalwart sheriff who feels it is his responsibility to bring law and order to his fledgling community. When the murderous outlaw Arthur Burns (Danny Huston) rapes and kills a local townswoman, Stanley captures the bandit’s two brothers to use as bait. He propositions the older brother, Charlie (Guy Pearce), with a deal to set his younger brother, Mikey (Richard Wilson), free – if he will track down and kill Arthur. Charlie agrees, embarking on a perilous journey across the Australian Outback, where he must brave harsh elements and merciless enemies – the most dangerous being his own psychotic sibling.

“The Proposition” is a character driven film and, like many Sergio Leone or Sam Peckinpah pictures, it’s riddled with protagonists and antagonists that can be quite challenging to sort and separate. Pearce is exceptional as the emotionlessly ruthless Charlie, who will do whatever is necessary to protect his fragile younger brother. His audacity is matched by Winstone’s Stanley, whose harsh exterior hides a softer, unwavering affection for his wife Martha (Emily Watson) – who will play an important role in motivation and perception for the dynamic lawman. On the other end of the spectrum, Arthur’s “family” of maniacal outlaws embodies all forms of evil, including a bloodthirsty butcher, a simple-minded lunatic, and Arthur himself, as a tempered sociopath whose own psychosis has eradicated all sense of moral decency – save for his warped sense of patriarchal duties. Watson’s Martha might be the sanest of the personalities on display at first, but she soon heads up a retribution-thirsting mob justice motif, which alternately rallies and repulses, like a modernized, explicit take on “The Ox-Bow Incident.” Another noteworthy performance is John Hurt’s drunken bounty hunter, who provides some much needed comic relief and also adds another example of the rough, loathsome characters that permeate “The Proposition’s” environments.

Filmed entirely on location, each scene drips with the scorching heat of the Australian scenery and the buckets of fake blood used for numerous instances of torture and mayhem. Not a single character is devoid of sweat, grime, and filth from the stark territory, surely symbolic of the varying presence or absence of morals, which continually shift when scenarios deteriorate or escalate. Even swarming flies can be seen in every outdoor take, lending to a sense of coarse, detailed ugliness, rarely seen in contemporary cinema. “The Proposition” is so stuffed with antiheroes, out-and-out villains, and everything in between that audiences will be forced to root for the lesser of multiple evils. But it’s nevertheless a highly rewarding, bleak, uniquely twisted vision of rectitude and honor.

– Joel Massie