Sydney Film Festival 2015 - Film Review - World Premiere - Last Cab to Darwin

Michael Caton - Last Cab to Darwin

Theatre director, Jeremy Sims, has brought this stage play to the big screen with very mixed results and a substantial number of clichés. Essentially this is a road film taking the viewer across the Australian centre from Broken Hill to Alice Springs to Darwin. The plotline for the film follows Broken Hill cab driver, Rex (Michael Caton) who has received a terminal cancer diagnosis. Rex has known of his illness for some time following surgery from an earlier diagnosis for the same disease. He does not wish to die in hospital like his father and on learning of law changes in the Northern Territory allowing euthanasia and the existence of a laptop device which manages sedative drugs, he resolves to drive to Darwin to end his life. Along the way, he picks up two travellers, a young Aboriginal man with football abilities and a young backpacking English nurse, who both accompany Rex on his journey. Rex however has an unresolved relationship with Aboriginal woman, Polly (Ningali Lawford-Wolf) which eventually draws him back to Broken Hill before it is too late.

Jackie Weaver is sadly miscast as the euthanasia campaign doctor seeking to assist patients to end their lives and does not convincingly carry the role. Aboriginal interaction with white Australians is shown in a typecast segregated manner more in common in the US or an earlier South Africa than Australia's Northern Territory in the current era. The film may well be suitable for a stage play but overall sits less comfortably on the big screen.