Film Review - Force of Nature: The Dry 2
Images courtesy of Village Roadshow.
Shortly after the first year of COVID lockdowns, Robert Connolly’s The Dry enjoyed a wash of success in Australian cinemas. It was an original murder mystery feature – adapting a popular novel by former Herald Sun journalist Jane Harper – and boasted a star turn from Eric Bana in a relatively rare Australian role. Now, inevitably, Connolly has adapted Harper’s sequel as well: the clumsily-titled Force of Nature: The Dry 2 goes on wide release this Thursday the 8th of February.
Bana returns as federal policeman Aaron Falk, this time drawn into the mystery when an informant on his big white-collar crime case fails to return from her corporate team-building exercise: a hike in the (fictional) Giralang Ranges. What starts as a missing-persons case quickly starts to resemble a murder – particularly given that the other five women on the hike with Falk’s collaborator Alice Russell all seem to have different accounts of exactly what happened out there in the bush.
Jane Harper is a consummate thriller novelist, and the film’s source material serves as dependable scaffolding for some occasionally uneven storytelling. Connolly’s film adds some commendably ominous imagery, a thoroughly unsubtle score, and a host of consequential on-screen performances; but doesn’t stray far from the narrative as written, save for an embellished plot line involving a childhood experience Falk had in Giralang.
It's in those varied performances that Force of Nature both impresses and stumbles. Big Aussie names Anna Torv and Richard Roxburgh both come off deserving of the large shadow they cast: Torv, excellent with her eyes, gives depth to the very recognizable victim Alice – an icy, wilful coworker we’ve all had – whereas Roxburgh, coming in with the “and” credit on barely three scenes, is deliciously nasty as company boss Daniel. Bana himself is given little of interest to do and even struggles to sell some of his detective-process dialogue, and the supporting cast outside of the women on the hike fail to make an impression.
Indeed, there exists a gulf between the hike and the rest of the film – as Falk investigates, we keep flashing back to it (often through the women’s recollections, which become increasingly implausible in their specific relevance to whatever topic is at hand), which only proves how much more compelling it is watching their team-building exercise as it unravelled than whatever Falk is doing in the present. Bana keeps getting out-acted by his scene partners, and his character’s investigation only really develops any urgency as the whole thing comes to a climax. Oddly though, he’s still loaded with that indelible star charisma such that you’re barracking for him, from the moment he first appears on screen, cutting short his swim at MSAC to meet his colleague in a carpark under the Bolte Bridge.
Indeed, at Force’s premiere, the cast and crew were at pains to emphasise the local-ness of the entire production – the gruelling location shoots in the Otways, Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges, the Aussie talent in front of and behind the camera, the specific character archetypes and social mores in the narrative – and it really does leave you with that impression. There would be no way to capture this distinctly Victorian bush setting without shooting on location, and it’s really exciting to see this familiar, beautiful, dramatic scenery mined for this kind of thriller tension – those results are truly a product of the production’s commitment.
It might sound toothless to say that a film which relatively regularly misses the dramatic mark can still charm me with a magpie’s warble cut over a bush establishing shot, but there’s too much to appreciate – and indeed be proud of – here to really cast it aside. Force of Nature is an engrossing modern murder mystery regardless of whether you grew up in Victoria or not, and it does too many difficult things well to be dismissed: a convincing core mystery, some brilliant performances, assured direction, beautiful locations. Australian cinemas should be so lucky as to get one of these every year.
Force of Nature: The Dry 2 is screening in cinemas from Thursday the 8th of February. For tickets and more info, click here.