M (100 minutes)
Whether Warwick Thornton’s Wolfram qualifies as a Western depends on what you think a Western is. There’s no lack of heat and dust, even more than there was in Thornton’s 2017 Sweet Country, likewise set north of Alice Springs around 1930 (and scripted by the same team, David Tranter and Steven McGregor).
Frontier violence, too, is no less prominent than in the earlier film. “Wolfram” is a word for tungsten, the commodity mined in this remote region. But the title seems meant to summon other associations, including the adage: “Man is a wolf to man.”
Wolfish behaviour is what we get from Casey (Erroll Shand), a desperado who rides into town with his sidekick Frank (Joe Bird), nominally to stake a mining claim. Their adventures are juxtaposed with those of a more innocent duo, Max (Hazel Jackson) and Kid (Eli Hart), Indigenous children effectively enslaved by their white father figure Billy (Matt Nable).
