The weather goes haywire. A man is murdered in the street. Another has strange visions. Such are the portents that take us into 1977's The Last Wave, a Peter Weir film starring Richard Chamberlain. The first part of the movie is terrific but, the more the mystery was explained, the less I liked it, the more dated it felt. But it's never really a bad film.
The movie begins at a little school, somewhere in Australia, far from the city. The kids are playing outside when suddenly it rains, very unusual in the desert. Their frazzled teacher hustles them all indoors and her already weak nerves are shattered when massive chunks of ice start falling from the sky.
Cut to Sydney and a lawyer named David (Chamberlain) is having strange dreams. He's hired to defend a group of Aborigines (I guess we're supposed to say Aboriginal people now?) who apparently bludgeoned a man to death. One of them is played by David Gulpilil from Walkabout and he gives a very good performance. His character, Chris, shows up in David's dream holding a strange stone.
The more the strange phenomena get tied to Aboriginal spiritualism, the less interested I became. Nothing against Aborigines, but the film's belief in the awe inspiring powers of their traditional beliefs feels very '70s/'80s New Age. The movie's much better when there's little to no explanation for what's going on. Somehow, the bathtub faucets are left on in David's home and the upstairs gets partially flooded. It seems somehow connected to the rainstorm but, logically, could it be? That little tease of a similarity helps keep the mystery feeling alive.
David's father is introduced, an Australian preacher, but David says he was born in South America. None of which explains Chamberlain's undisguised American accent. But otherwise he gives a decent performance.
The Last Wave is available on The Criterion Channel.
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