DREAMLAND (15)
A BRILLIANT Margot Robbie battles with a muddled script in this well-worn 1930s-set crime drama.
The setting is a farm in rural Texas which is being buffeted by dust storms, drought and the Great Depression.
Unemployed Eugene (English actor Finn Cole) sits in a disused barn reading pulp detective magazines, the only excitement on offer in his impoverished town. The morose teenager has cut himself off from his mother (Kerry Condon), his police deputy stepfather George (Travis Fimmel) and his younger half-sister Phoebe (Darby Camp).
But his desperate life perks up when he discovers fugitive bank robber Allison Wells (Robbie) hiding in his barn with a bullet in her leg.
According to the Wanted posters, she was injured during a botched heist that led to the deaths of five people including a young child. To Eugene, it’s like she just limped out of one of his lurid magazines.
Claiming the cops killed the kid, Allison begins to toy with the besotted teenager, manipulating him by playing up to his ideas of the romantic outlaw and the damsel in distress.
However, director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte doesn’t seem to appreciate his star’s powerful performance. He prefers tipping his hat to Terrence Malick’s crime flicks Badlands and Days Of Heaven to crafting compelling drama. And there is a fine line between loving homage and shameless rip-off. The film brightens up whenever Robbie is on screen but we spend far too much time with dull Eugene.
In cinemas now.