The Rover got mentioned a couple of times on Broken Forum. It doesn’t have terribly good reviews but Guy Pearce appearing in it plus it being a post-apocalypse movie was enough to get me interested. The opening text states that it is set 10 years after the collapse of civilization in Australia but doesn’t explain the nature of the event. Online summaries claim that it’s an economic collapse, but that doesn’t seem to explain the low population that is evident. That’s just one of the many things about its world-building and writing that feels clunky.

Pearce plays Eric, a violently angry man who takes extreme measures to recover a car that was stolen from him. To track down the thieves, he is forced to join up with Rey whose brother is a member of the gang. Played by Robert Pattinson, Rey is slow-witted and talkative in a needy way, especially since he seems to have been abandoned by the gang after suffering an injury. By contrast, the grim and bitter Eric speaks only grudgingly and suffers Rey’s presence only because he needs him. It’s a setup that’s not wholly original but still feels alive with potential.

Certainly the performers are competent enough. Without much dialogue, Pearce is forced to emote solely through facial expressions and body language. My wife complains that he isn’t a good enough actor to pull it off properly but at least he looks the part. Pattinson is the real surprise here proving that he can indeed act and convey the sense of vulnerability that the role requires. I also think that it’s a rare portrayal of a character with a mental disability, albeit a mild one, that is neither exploitative nor focused primarily around the disability.

Yet it’s a film that doesn’t really work. It’s hard to pin down exactly what goes wrong. The pacing feels off certainly. The choice of highlighting Asian influences in this post-apocalyptic is interesting but also jarring. The world and its characters lack credibility. The two seem implausibly capable of taking down everyone in their way and unrealistically blasé about their own survival. Even the music doesn’t quite gel with what we on the screen.

But most of all, director David Michôd fails to make the audience emotionally connect with the characters in any way. In the case of Rey, the impact of his drive to find his brother is stunted because we have no idea what kind of relationship they have. As for Eric, there is confusion about whether or not the audience is supposed to sympathize with him since he is all too happy to initiate violence against innocents. I think the ending is especially clumsy in this regard because it suggests that the director actually does want the audience to at least empathize with him.

Since we can’t connect with the characters, we don’t really care what happens to them and so we end up feeling bored. We do get at what makes Eric tick when he is arrested and then interrogated by what passes for law enforcement in the wasteland. But it’s bad scene, a moment of pure exposition when the director is forced to fall back on directly telling the audience the big message instead of showing the audience what lies at the heart of this character.

What I find most ironic is that Guy Pearce of all people should know better. He has already appeared in a film, also shot in Australia, that has already said everything that The Rover is trying to say about how senseless violence and banal evil thrives in places where there is no civilization. That film is Nick Cave’s The Proposition, and it is immeasurably better in every respect than this one.