FOUR stars for this Tasmanian-grown eco-thriller forgives little visual moments that, while their validity doesn’t withstand close examination, don’t diminish a beautiful, exciting, tense and involving film.

In a strong characterisation, Willem Dafoe stars as Martin, a reticent adventurer commissioned by a German firm to collect biological samples of a Tasmanian tiger for DNA study.

Yes, we know the thylacine became extinct last century. But film can go where it wishes and the notion of a surviving Tasmanian tiger offers high semiotic opportunity.

Martin, forbidden to tell anybody why he’s there, heads off into some spectacular wilderness to earn his fee. Unemployed forestry workers think he’s a greenie. The greenies protesting at the forest gate think the timber barons employ him.

Daniel Nettheim directs Alice Adamson’s adaptation of the novel by Julia Leigh with care, connection to the theme and concern for its message.

Martin bases himself in a house at the end of a track where Lucy (Frances O’Connor) lies ill in the care of her two children (promising juveniles Morgana Davies and Finn Woodlock), who wait for their father’s return from a long absence. If Martin finds a thylocine he must kill it to fulfil his contract. Eventually he does. Euthanasing an old, starving, weak, lonely animal is merciful and justifiable. But that’s not the film’s denouement.

The film’s tensions are subtle and inexorable. The cast is good. The camera and sound crew who endured the difficulties of recording it merit praise for their artistry and endurance.  For many, the film’s fifth star will be the environment – beautiful, challenging, no place for neophytes in search of an improbability.

At Dendy and Greater Union