This “thunderously powerful” film has caused considerable controversy in Australia, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail, and no wonder. It explores one of the country’s most notorious mass shootings, of 35 people at Port Arthur, in Tasmania, in 1996. “Dramatising the Dunblane massacre would have the same effect here”; but the subject matter is handled so intelligently that I, for one, am glad to have seen the film. Caleb Landry Jones gives a “stunning performance” as the killer, Martin Bryant, who was 28 when he went on the rampage, and who is only ever referred to in the film as Nitram, the nickname he acquired at school (his own name backwards). The film takes a “chilling look” at how his family and the wider community failed to identify him as dangerous, and how he was able to buy enough guns “to sustain a medium-sized militia”. The whole thing is “superbly” done.
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