For the majority of moviegoers, the Sam Worthington seen most recently was augmented by blue VFX and a fighting Stephen Lang on a distant alien planet. But besides his Avatar commitment, the actor has continued amassing roles often removed from the blockbuster action of Terminator or Clash of the Titans. Mountain guide Guy Cotter in Everest, Captain Glover in Hacksaw Ridge, filicidal frontier outlaw LeMay in The Last Son, Ron Lafferty in Under The Banner of Heaven: all these roles have let him flex his dramatic prowess. Transfusion continues that trend with one of his stronger character actor turns, bringing a simmering rage and bottled pain to this handsome Australian crime drama.
Actor Matt Nable’s directorial debut emphasizes the drama part of that genre over the crime elements. Transfusion quickly establishes a volatile homelife of single father Ryan Logan (Worthington), struggling with PTSD from his service as a Special Forces sniper, and his son Billy (Edward Carmody) struggling in his own way. Poor school performance and repeated delinquency holds the threat of Ryan losing custody of his son over the entire runtime: a constantly looming air of anxiety behind every moment of money troubles, unsteady employment, disreputable school friends or blackmail and underworld dangers. The trailer may have sold Transfusion as a crime thriller, but it’s a sad trauma-wracked domestic drama first and foremost. As Ryan seeks employers willing to hire him and reconnects with old friend and ex-operative Johnny (Matt Nable), the film gradually teases out flashbacks of happier married days and of a tragedy that provides a harrowing reason for the movie’s title. Fleeting visions of his wife haunt Ryan throughout the movie; it’s a derivative direction choice, yet one that Worthington sells through his tightly wound and wounded performance.
That balance of familiar and intense could similarly describe the movie as a whole. Whether engaging in soldier-back-home anxiety, fraught father-son drama or vets-embroiled-in-crime thrills, Transfusion holds no narrative surprises, but Nable executes each facet with serviceable confidence. Ryan and Johnny’s entanglement with local drug runners is never the plot’s most pressing focus, and is always treated as a release valve for its leads rather than merely a means for gun-blazing sequences. That’s not to say that the action isn’t decently directed. Those coming into this expecting to see much violence will be disappointed, but the film’s handful of confrontations unfold with gritty urgency that always serve the characters: often brief, low-key, never extraneous and laced with anger. In particular, a climactic brawl crashes through an apartment to deliver a payoff of bloody aftermath and explosive emotion.
Matt Nable’s debut as a director is well aware of its strengths. The chemistry between its director/co-lead, Sam Worthington, and Edward Carmody imbue an unremarkable-on-paper addition to the genre with some subtle dramatic heft. Watch this with expectations attuned for quiet sensitivity instead of shootouts and one might just become unexpectedly invested. Familiar yet compelling, Transfusion works far more effectively as a somber character drama than as a crime film, and is better for it.
Photo courtesy of Saban Films
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