DIRECTOR: John Hillcoat

CAST: Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, Emily Watson, David Wenham, John Hurt

REVIEW:

With The Proposition, Australian director John Hillcoat and screenwriter/composer Nick Cave have taken the saying “revenge is a dish best served cold” and taken it up—or down, depending on one’s perspective—a notch. The Proposition is considered an unconventional Western, but it doesn’t deal in clear-cut black hats and white hats or simple shoot-em-ups. Brutal, unromanticized, and mercilessly gritty to the point of being disturbing, it’s a grim, haunting odyssey that doesn’t deal in typical crowd-pleasing Western tropes and conventions, at least not straightforwardly.