Like The Giver, reviewed yesterday, Tomorrow When the War Began (2010) is a 2010s adaptation of 1990s young adult fiction. Unlike The Giver, which boasts an Australian director and star but was a Hollywood production drawn from American source material, Tomorrow is a homegrown production utilizing Australian source material, funding, shooting locations, and a large pool of talent behind & before the camera. While I’ve read neither Lois Lowry’s nor John Marsden’s source texts, as a child of the 1990s I can attest to the Tomorrow series' popularity, and having read other Marsden works (notably So Much to Tell You and Letters from the Inside) can attest to his uncommonly good knack for writing about and for teenage readers.
The film adaptation of Tomorrow is written and directed by Stuart Beattie, whose prolific screenwriting career encompasses productions from Australia (Australia, Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan), America (Pirates of the Caribbean, Collateral, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra), between (Interceptor), and beneath (I, Frankenstein, which he also directed). Given the frequently fabulist nature of his projects, on paper one would peg Beattie as a better fit for the sci-fi dystopia of The Giver, and Phillip Noyce a better fit for the grounded, Red Dawn with teens premise of Tomorrow. But setting aside that thought experiment, Beattie proves a solid director of both action and character beats, and I certainly preferred Tomorrow to The Giver, not to mention the Red Dawn remake improbably headlined by two Australians.
Similar to said Red Dawn remake, in which North Korean invaders (replacing the Russian invaders of John Milius’s original and the remake’s own initially proposed Chinese invaders) infiltrate American soil, Tomorrow posits an invasion of Australia by a shadowy coalition of Asian nations looking to plunder the country’s resources. The invasion transpires unbeknownst to seven teenagers on a camping trip. When they return home to find their town occupied and parents killed or kidnapped, they must band together to survive.
The film’s five act (by my count) structure is more novelistic than filmic, with the characters efficiently sketched in the opening act and taking the fight to the enemy (and equipped to do so across sequels that never eventuated) by the closing act. Wikipedia, which characterizes the film’s reception as lukewarm, highlighted the film’s perceived racism and ropey acting as recurring critical gripes, criticisms I don’t entirely share. Pragmatically speaking, the invading force had to come from somewhere, making it an inherently racist genre trope that can’t be circumvented, and the 84% monocultural teen casting, while not reflective of multicultural Australia, is certainly consistent with the compositions of many regional towns and the social cliques in said towns. Moreover, I thought the young cast was uniformly good—with a particularly strong lead anchor in Caitlin Stasey—marred only by Chris Pang (otherwise capable) being markedly a half decade older than his fellow 'teens'.
Tomorrow ultimately brushes against the constraints of any large-scale Australian film not directed by George Miller or Baz Luhrmann that attempts to compete with Hollywood, its $27 million budget—generous by most Australian standards—paltry compared to its American counterparts (for comparison, The Hunger Games cost $78 million and Divergent $88 million). I’m also a bit iffy on the closing cornball moments and the digitally animated end credits, a twenty-first century fad I’d quietly like to die. But the film is confidently made, slick mainstream entertainment, with regional NSW locations and action sequences well-shot by Ben Nott.
I checked in with Brian Trenchard-Smith earlier this year, thoroughly enjoying Deathcheaters and enjoying, with reservations, Stunt Rock. I also namechecked him in my recent review of The Hitman’s Bodyguard films, unfavourably comparing Patrick Hughes to Trenchard-Smith as an earlier action movie artisan who injected more personality into his work. Drive Hard (2014) is Trenchard-Smith’s most recent film, and the opening digitally animated credits—the reverse of Tomorrow—showing the parts of a race car had me worried the film would be a try hard, old man’s Fast and Furious knockoff. I was relieved, then, to find the movie—in which a criminal (John Cusack) forces a former racer turned driving instructor (Thomas Jane) to be his getaway driver—is of a piece with Trenchard-Smith's 1970s and 80s work, and that his directorial personality remains intact.
The
scope of Drive Hard is understandably smaller than Stunt Rock, Deathcheaters,
The Man from Hong Kong et al.—the framing of the action is tighter and the
stuntwork reined in and decidedly less gonzo, a sign we're no longer in
Ozploitation-era Australia where the open roads are Grant Page’s playground—but the film has wit and energy and well-utilizes its Gold Coast/Queensland setting. I
could easily imagine the script being made in Trenchard-Smith’s heyday, with Page or John
Hargreaves in the Jane role and an American import in Cusack’s. While the
supporting players are a smidgen too broad, the usually taciturn Jane makes
some goofy choices that work, and Cusack—an actor I’ve
largely checked out on, much as he’s largely checked out on acting—is engaged here and game to play.
Ben