skybridge

koberulz.bsky.social · @koberulz.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Spotswood 6/10

I'm not often in the mood for the whole small-town charm thing—or charm in general really—but this caught me at as good a time as any. Errol Wallace (Anthony Hopkins, Fracture) is an efficiency expert who's been brought into a small Australian moccasin manufacturer to see what can be done about the way they run their business. It's unclear quite why this has been done, as owner Ball (Alwyn Kurts, Tim) clearly has no interest in running an efficient operation. The offices and workshop are a mess, lunch breaks go for hours, the sewing ladies spend most of their time chit-chatting, and he's selling off company assets to keep afloat rather than put his foot down about any of that. It could be seen, I suppose, as him needing an excuse, someone to lay the blame on, but he doesn't really give the impression that he cares more about the money than about his employees enjoying themselves. To give an idea of just how casually this is all pitched, the biggest conflict of the film isn't Mr. Ball's internal agony over layoffs and other workplace limitations, it isn't conflict between Ball and Wallace over how best to run things, and it isn't even the major union dispute at a different, much larger company, that Wallace is overseeing on the side. It's the town's annual slot-car race, which Ball's workers have entered a team into, as they do each year. There's also a rather weaselly employee of Ball's (Russell Crowe, Romper Stomper) who's got ambitions of his own, and the romantic tribulations of point-of-view character Carey (Ben Mendelsohn, Animal Kingdom), who's quite keen on the boss's daughter (Rebecca Rigg, Fatty Finn) and doesn't realise he'd be far better off with a colleague (Toni Collette, Muriel's Wedding).

#movie

Published 2026-06-16 00:00 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere