The Proposition (2005)
Average Rating: 7.3/10
Reviews Counted: 123
Fresh: 107 | Rotten: 16
Brutal, unflinching, and violent, but thought-provoking and with excellent performances, this Australian western is the one of the best examples of the genre to come along in recent times.
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Critic Reviews: 35
Fresh: 30 | Rotten: 5
Brutal, unflinching, and violent, but thought-provoking and with excellent performances, this Australian western is the one of the best examples of the genre to come along in recent times.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 67,285
My Rating
Movie Info
An outlaw is goaded into taking on justice at its most brutal in this hard-edged Western set in rural Australia in the 1880s. Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) is a criminal living in the outback. He and his two brothers, Arthur (Danny Huston) and Mikey (Richard Wilson), are on the run from the law for rape and murder. Arthur is a violent and dangerous sociopath with a much longer rap sheet than his siblings and a reputation for hiding out in villages so lawless the police are afraid to visit them,
Watch It Now
Cast
-
Guy Pearce
Charlie Burns -
Ray Winstone
Captain Stanley -
Emily Watson
Martha Stanley -
Danny Huston
Arthur Burns -
John Hurt
Jellon Lamb -
David Wenham
Eden Fletcher -
Noah Taylor
Brian O'Leary -
David Gulpilil
Jacko -
Leah Purcell
Queenie -
Richard Wilson
Mike Burns -
Tom E. Lewis
Two Bob -
Robert Morgan
Sgt. Lawrence -
Oliver Ackland
Patrick Hopkins
ADVERTISEMENT
The Proposition Trailer & Photos
All Critics (127) | Top Critics (35) | Fresh (110) | Rotten (16) | DVD (14)
A beautifully shot tracker's western that brings the Fordian poles of garden and desert to bear on the bushrangers' Outback, this is also a revenge drama of substantial horror.
Top CriticA visionary tale of a fragile civilizing impulse crushed by family loyalty and a lust for revenge in the vast Outback of the late 19th century.
It doesn't offer much that hasn't already been said about lawless frontier towns, bonds between outlaws or the settling of the West.
By the end, it all pays off exactly the way a hundred earlier Westerns did.
In-your-face combativeness is The Proposition's power, and for those of you who value your westerns, the effect is not unlike that of The Wild Bunch or Unforgiven.
It's fitting that The Proposition is set Down Under, because in many ways, it's a reverse Western.
John Hillcoat's violence-probing Western feels as uncompromisingly bleak, royally widescreen and graphically violent as any Sam Peckinpah opus - a sunburned, grimy-nailed saga of point-blank executions and blood wrung from a cat o' nine tails.
Ferocious yet free of shallow misanthropy
What the characters have in common--the only thing they have in common, really--is the desire for community amid the well-founded expectation of imminent, violent death.
ustralian-born singer/songwriter Nick Cave pens his second film (after "Ghosts ... Of The Civil Dead") and generates a prescient allegory about imperialism.
Guy Pearce seems to have boiled himself down into some kind of Guy Pearce Concentrate. Winstone looks like he's been sculpted from the Australian wilderness around him.
a mythic exploration of the ever shifting frontier between savagery and civilisation in an unforgiving landscape.
Any movie that can cling to your memory with as much brutal power as this fantastic film is unquestionably a proposition worth taking.
The finest, strangest and most uncompromising western to hit screens since Unforgiven.
Cave's screenplay is masterful in taking the trappings of the western genre and transposing them to the Australian Outback. There's an ebb and flow to his writing and there's also the sense that tragedy is inevitable. He also manages to work in the dep
An Australian western without genre traditions in mind -- instead, their movie explores the complexities of moral relativity.
A conflicted elegy for a brutal past, Hillcoat's The Proposition is also a superb torchbearer for the fading Western genre.
This Aussie horse opera doesn't so much present an exotic, bizarro version of the Wild West as the apotheosis of it.
It's as strong a Western as you're likely to see, at least since Clint Eastwood gave us Unforgiven 14 years ago.
... a movie full of startling and sometimes beautiful moments
Audience Reviews for The Proposition
Super Reviewer
-
- Jellon Lamb: I came to this forsaken land and the God in me just evaporated.
-
- Arthur Burns: Love, love is the king. Love and family.
-
- Martha Stanley: What if it had been me?
-
- Jellon Lamb: (singing) Oh, Danny boy, the flies, the flies are crawling.
-
- Captain Stanley: I will civilize this land.
-
- Charlie Burns: You want me to kill me brother.
Discussion Forum
There are no discussion threads for The Proposition yet.
Latest News on The Proposition
May 8, 2006:
Trailer Bulletin: The PropositionIf you like your action westerns extra gritty and a little on the Australian side, you'll want to be...
May 5, 2006:
Guy Pearce and John Hillcoat Discuss "The Proposition"Director John Hillcoat had a big ambition when he undertook "The Proposition": a Western...
April 25, 2006:
Photo Gallery Update: "Stick It," "Wassup Rockers," and "The Proposition"They're not exactly blockbusters but we couldn't resist sharing the new photo galleries for...
What's Hot On RT
Bradley Cooper's Best Movies
Fast & Furious 6 is Certified Fresh
Fast & Furious cars gallery
Blockbusters ranked!
Featured on RT
- Critics Consensus: Fast & Furious 6 is Certified Fresh 33
- Red Carpet Photos with Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Gina Carano and More 0
- Video: The Hangover Part III Cast Interviews 0
- Total Recall: Bradley Cooper's Best Movies 40
- Parental Guidance: Epic and Beautiful Creatures 2
- Comic Book Movies You Can Watch Online 9
- In Pictures: The Cars of Fast & Furious 0
Top Headlines
-
Evan Peters Joins X-Men: Days of Future Past
0
-
Toby Jones Talks Captain America: The Winter Soldier
1
-
The Poltergeist Reboot May Actually Be a Sequel
10
-
Will Forte Promises MacGruber 2
1
-
Universal Plans Timecop Reboot
2
-
Return of the Jedi Turns 30
1
-
Vin Diesel Says Fast & Furious 7 Will Take Place in L.A.
0
Fresh Links
Featured
Star Trek Movies Ranked
HitFix offers their own take on the worst-to-best of the Enterprise crew's cinematic adventures.
Top 10 Star Trek Villains
Rolling Stone unveils the Enterprise's most irksome adversaries.
Celebrity Yearkbook Flashback
We'll bet you never realized how many stars were cheerleaders and high school athletes!
50 Most Classic Movie Moms
In celebration of Mother's Day, TimeOut offers up 50 iconic matriarchs from the big screen.
Weirdest Movie Siblings
From Twins to The Royal Tenenbaums, Moviefone explores cinema's oddest siblings.
Promos
Follow RT on Twitter!
Spice up your feed with hourly Tomatometer updates!
A friend of mine said I should see it because I said I wasn't a fan of Guy Pierce, but he was alright. I sure am itching to see him in Lawless!