Mystery Road Movie Review 442

Mystery Road is a 2013 Australian thriller directed by Ivan Sen and starring Aaron Pedersen, Hugo Weaving and Ryan Kwanten.

An aboriginal girl is found dead on a road by a local truck driver. Aboriginal Detective Jay Swan(Pedersen) is brought in to investigate the case. The girl's name is Julie and he finds out that she was a prostitute and that she would sleep with truckers. He asks around the local area for information about her, but he is met with some resistance. He asks a local farmer, Sam Bailey about the night Julie was killed and he doesn't have any information for him. Jay has an ex wife and daughter called Crystal and she knew Julie but she doesn't know anything. His ex wife is an alcoholic and Jay thinks that his daughter would be better off with him but she won't go with him.

Jay has a cop friend called Johnno(Weaving) who is a little suspect. Jay sees him on the road one night with another guy and it looks very suspicious. Jay finds out that the murder weapon was a hunting knife and that Julie was bitten by a dog also. He discovers that Julie went to a motel for sex and he visits it and talks to the owner. She tells him that she remembers a white truck at the motel and a guy who calls himself William Smith. Jay recalls that Sam Bailey's son Pete(Kwanten) has a white truck and dogs. He goes to the farm and talks to Pete, but gets nothing out of him only attitude. Jay finds that Pete has a criminal record. Jay uncovers information about a cop who was killed on the job. He talks to his widow and finds out that the cop got a call from someone he knew on the night he was killed. Jay thinks that something fishy is going on. Is Johnno mixed up in this?

Jay sees Johnno meet some drug dealer and he takes the dealer into custody. He gets information out of him. The dealer says that he pimps out local girls to cover his debts.He also tells Jay about a load of heroin that he had in his car which was stolen. Johnno intervenes and lets the dealer go as he is his snitch. Jay knows that there is something wrong here.  He thinks that Johnno is smuggling drugs as he is missing something which can only be the heroin.He goes to Julie's place and finds the heroin. He calls the crooked Johnno to meet him with the drugs. He gets himself a gun and pulls up to the meeting place on Mystery Road. A few people show up including Johnno and Pete and Pete's dad, Sam who was also in on the drugs operation.There is a huge shootout and Jay manages to kill the baddies, including dirty cop Johnno. He finds a necklace belonging to the dead Julie in the back of the car so it proves that they killed her as she got mixed up with their operation. The movie ends with Jay meeting his ex wife and daughter.

This movie was slow. I found it a little tedious sometimes and the story got a bit messy near the end. I liked the cast and the lead actor Pederson was good in his part. I liked the shots of the Australian outback and the Western type feel to this. I just thought that it dragged in parts and this took away from the film. All in all, this was interesting and if you like slow burners, then you will enjoy this. I will give it a 6/10.