A slice of Aussie action

Don't all write, but I would be interested to hear from any Australian who remembers whether the pizza had reached Sydney by 1969.

The banal point is laboured, Tarantino-like, in writerdirector David Caesar's overly violent Dirty Deeds, when American mafiosi Tony Testano and Sal Cassela (John Goodman, Felix Williamson) arrive from Chicago to muscle in on the slot-machine rackets run by big boss Barry (Bryan Brown), wife Sharon (Toni Collette) and nephew Darcy (Sam Worthington), just back from Vietnam to find a different battlefield in full play.

Barry's "bucket and sledgehammer" method of collecting the dollars and splitting any differences with rival hoods receives a jolt from the Yankee in-comers who don't even know what language is spoken Down Under, and can't find a pizza joint in King's Cross.

The film has pretensions to be Oz's answer to Get Carter, with the venerable but wiry Brown doing the cool Michael Caine number with shotgun and Magnum, and not wasting a second on posttrigger remorse. It's this unapologetic ruthlessness from colourful characters, whom you expect to come on strong with the "Strine" gags, that has got a callously effective film its well-deserved Cert 18.

Everyone is pictured on the make or the take (or both), from city detectives (Sam Neill) to Parliamentary senators. Caesar overindulges his fondness for period "style" with screen "wipes" and crazily angled shots that make it seem as if the camera was getting home late and unsteady from a drinking spree.

The lengthy climax occurs at a wild-boar hunting party in the outback in which the Yanks are duly humbled and sent homewards to collect their comeuppance from their capo - possibly something more filling than a deep-pan pizza.

Dirty Deeds
Cert: cert18