I watched this movie with great anticipation. I had read the book which did a great job painting a distressed town in the grip of a devastating drought. In the book one could feel the heat and hear the desiccated undergrowth crackle. Emotional conflicts were also handled nicely. The writing and the way the book paints the landscape and the people masks the weakness in the plot and the poorly developed unveiling of the perpetrator
Sadly the movie fails to show any emotional depth in any characters. The town is greener and far less bleak than shown in the book.
To make matters worse the way the crime is solved is even more abbreviated than in the book.
As a consequence it fails as both an Australian outback movies as well as a crime movie. My adult son who had not read the book described it as boring.
