New in town, sailor?
Three Navy shipmates have a night on the town in Sydney before leaving for the Gulf in Three Blind Mice, an intense Australian movie that seems awash in testosterone.
The three men are Harry (Matthew Newton, who also wrote and directed), a smooth charmer who seems, in some fashion, to be in charge; Dean (Toby Schmitz), an uptight guy whose only mission for the night is to meet up with his fiancee and her parents for dinner, and Sam (Ewen Leslie), who appears to be nursing some sort of secret. Sam seems to need protecting. The guys check into a hotel for the night and when Sam changes into his dress uniform, there's a brief shot of lash marks on his back. Uh, oh.
What various conversations reveal is that Sam intends to go AWOL and never go back to the armed forces. Harry and Dean hope to keep an eye on Sam and prevent him from ruining his life, but after Sam meets the beautiful Emma (Gracie Otto) in a diner, all bets are off. Sam and Emma take off in a park, leaving Harry and Dean to try to find them.
Three Blind Mice is quick and smart and edgy. Though it's often very funny, it's constructed in a way that builds tremendous tension. The apparently sweet and chipper Harry shows a different side of himself during a poker game with a handful of louts, for example, and the camera is right in the men's faces for the macho sequence.
Likewise, Dean's dinner with his fiancee, an ostensibly innocent event, quickly turns into a nightmarish scene -- she mocks his ambitions, her mother gets drunk and her father argues with the restaurant owner about karaoke. It's hideous.
And fascinating.
Sam, meanwhile, has gone with Emma to visit his mother and his grandfather, and the encounter with his family is yet another adventure. Just when you think Sam's thread in this story has been exhausted, there's another surprise in store.
Three Blind Mice defies expectation. This is an unpredictable landscape populated by fully three-dimensional characters, and it's entirely entertaining. This is the world as men live in it.
Three Blind Mice is has won awards at the London Film Festival and the Thessaloniki Film Festival.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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