IVAN Sen’s outback detective thriller is something of a curate’s egg.

Aaron Pedersen is one of the good parts, playing Aboriginal Jay, back in town (looking like Winton) after qualifying as a detective. The body of a young Aboriginal girl has been found in a culvert. Whodunnit and why?

In a community where everybody knows what’s going on but nobody is prepared to tell, Jay knows there is a crime to be solved, but not what it involves. Is it drugs, prostitution, alcoholism, or wild dogs or just about anything else lying beneath the town’s surface?

Sen’s taciturn screenplay interacts with a stark environment. The film’s style often evokes thrillers and B-Westerns from a long-gone Hollywood era. The final shootout on top of the only elevation for miles around is remarkable for how often each gun fires before reloading. The film’s length could have been rendered more manageable by using fewer aerial shots of vehicles driving along town streets that, by their sterile regularity, contrast powerfully with the outback beyond.

Offsetting these niggling annoyances, a strong cast includes Hugo Weaving as another detective, Tony Barry as the sergeant, Jack Thompson as an old grazier unable to remember (or so he says) and Tasma Walton as Jay’s ex-wife, now wedded to the bottle.

At Capitol 6 and Palace Electric