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'The Proposition': A harsh tale of loyalty and betrayal

Saturated in a brusque, no-frills brutality, the Australian Western "The Proposition" makes Sam Peckinpah look like a wuss.

Nick Cave, drawing from the same dark place that drives his music, has screenwritten a harsh, unsparing movie about the eternal clash between that which is civilized and that which is not. With mankind somewhere in between.

First Look Pictures 'The Proposition' B+ The verdict: Takes-no-prisoners powerful. And not for the squeamish. Director: John Hillcoat Starring: Guy Pearce, Emily Watson, John Hurt, Ray Winstone, David Wenham Run time: 104 minutes Release date: May 5, 2006 Rating: R for strong grisly violence, and for language. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'The Proposition'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Set in the Australian Outback in the late 19th century, the film begins with a disorienting burst of gunfire that leaves several assorted prostitutes dead and the cabin where they were holed up with the Burns brothers riddled like Swiss cheese.

It's disorienting because a) we don't know who's doing what to whom; b) hey, isn't that Guy Pearce as one of the brothers, and he's usually a good guy (albeit a messed-up one)? and c) Capt. Stanley ("Sexy Beast's" Ray Winstone), the officer ordering the gunfire, treats the obviously out-of-luck outlaws with such ain't-I-having-fun sadism.

So the Burnses are the good guys ... right?

Not hardly. In fact, no one's really a good guy in "The Proposition" — though, ultimately, Stanley comes close, almost in spite of the pressures he puts on himself.

The Burnses, Charlie (Pearce) and younger brother Mikey (Richard Wilson), are mad-dog killers whose latest barbarity was the slaughter of an entire family, including the pregnant wife, who was also raped.

Stanley has, well, a proposition for Charlie: Trade one brother's life for another. His choice.

Charlie can either kill the really bad egg in the family — his savage older brother Arthur (Danny Huston), who's holed up in the hills, where even the most bloodthirsty aborigines (their presence adds a racial layer to the mix) won't mess with him. Or he can watch his whimpering, half-witted little brother swing from a rope on Christmas Day.

In a manner reminiscent of "Days of Heaven," director John Hillcoat fills his screen with wide-angle, eye-filling vistas rippling with heat and dust and biblical motifs. And echoing Presbyterian Church (Robert Altman's frontier settlement built on blood, whores and religion in "McCabe and Mrs. Miller"), the filmmaker depicts the tenuous hold man-made places have on the wilderness.

Nowhere is this contrast more palpable than in Stanley's pretty, devoted wife, Martha, played by the immensely talented Emily Watson (check her out in an entirely different role in "Wah-Wah"). Behaving as if merely acknowledging her rough-hewn surroundings would give them more power, Martha drives through town seated primly in her pony trap, as if she were on a jaunt down an English country lane. Perhaps more telling is her perfect rose garden, with only a tiny, well-tended white picket fence between it and ... everywhere else.

"The Proposition" is not for people who like multilayered plots or character nuances. It has a barrenness worthy of Beckett — in their own version of "Endgame," Charlie and Arthur sit together on the ground, the fathomless land stretching out before them. And a fatedness as pitiless as the Greeks' hangs over everything that happens.

True, Cave's poetic ruminations can seem forced and sentimental. Further, the film sometimes feels self-important, too taken with its own "Waltzing Matilda" mythos.

But the acting is superb — let's not leave out John Hurt as a bounty hunter fond of Shakespeare. And the movie gets at something primal in the pit of your stomach, something that speaks of loyalty and betrayal, of men's souls — or the lack thereof.

Peckinpah would like "The Proposition." More importantly, so would Clint Eastwood.