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n. Hugo Weaving ~ The CustodianAU Movie 1993: Hugo content: approx 21% (109 mins )Frank ~ trapped, corrupting Bent Copper Cast: Anthony LaPaglia James Quinlan, Hugo Weaving Frank Church, Barry Otto Ferguson, Kelly Dingwall Reynolds Dir: John Dingwall Availablity: (Region 0 -multi region) DVD available outside US. Region 1 US DVD available for US. |
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Hugo Weaving: The Custodian Plot/Comments:This should be a great film: a true story of police corruption, friendship and betrayal with Anthony LaPaglia, Barry Otto and Hugo Weaving. How can it fail? But it does ~ and for the most part, badly. |
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Custodian starts off well: Quinlan's wife drunkenly throws herself
at everyone (including his partner, Frank) at a police karaoke, humiliating
him in front of the whole department. After the inevitable split Quinlan
(heavy handedly referred to as "the last honest cop" "he can't be bought",
etc) begins to get jealous of Frank's seemingly motiveless wealth and when
he discovers that he's involved in a shakedown, he demands a piece of the
pie for himself.
Cue the 'meeting Mr Big' scene (probably one of the three standouts in the entire film). The cops are in the pocket of the local respectable businessman, the twist being that he takes his own 'mugshots' of bent cops accepting their first bribe: Frank has been trapped and blackmailed into continued greed and blacker crimes (Hugo Weaving looking uncomfortable, sorrowful, resigned but resentful) and Quinlan is now part of his organisation. |
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The Custodian Gallery
Back: Reckless
Kelly
Next: Exile
Web Weaving |
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The 'last honest cop' is now theoretically as bent as those he despises:
the only other man who's not up for sale is the quiet and morally upstanding
Internal Affairs officer Ferguson (Barry Otto). You'd expect
a story of broken trust and friendship and a struggle between loyalty to
partner/friend and law/job. And you'd be wrong.
Suddenly it swings off into an overcomplicated and badly-acted tangent involving Quinlan setting up the bent coppers (and himself) by making disguised phone calls to a local TV expose journo and our faithful IA officer. Despite ~ or perhaps because of ~ the fact that it is based on a true story, it all gets disappointingly 1980s TV Movie of the Week . It's just awful: terribly shot, clunky lines, dragging plot, abysmal acting and totally uninvolving... sadly, this bit goes on forever. Once Quinlan has been introduced to Mr Big, Frank is sidelined completely and we hardly ever see LaPaglia and Weaving together, meaning that there's no emotional connection anywhere. Mostly it's just deeply tedious. Eventually, as everything comes to a head (though your desperate wish to have Quinlan's girlfriend wacked like a proper bent-copper movie is unfulfilled), your patience is rewarded with Good Scene 2 (see Hugo content for more details) and after even more watching-paint-dry moments, Good Scene 3. |
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Typical Hugo Weaving Quotes:
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last scene finally gets Barry Otto and Hugo Weaving together. Ferguson,
a mild-mannered, decent guy pushed too far by the murder (and rape) of
his pregnant wife breaks down Frank's door, putting a gun to his head,
delivering a great wild-eyed Righteous Fury monologue and blowing Frank's
corrupt brains out over the hideously flowery bed.
...and then there's some more tedious stuff involving a trial and a sort of happy ending but interest has long died off by that point. |
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This seemed great on paper and admittedly, The Custodian has had
some great reviews but they seem to belong to a completely different version
of the film.
It looks cheesy and cheap: the acting is often shockingly inadequate; there's a lot of dead time (much tighter editing is needed: this feels like a squished up mini-series); and the camera is either a static 2-shot or Dramatic Close Up Moment, making it feel like an episode of Knot's Landing. Most bizarrely and disappointingly, despite his superb Lantana performance, there's some really awful 'Pacino-lite acting karaoke' mugging from LaPaglia and even Otto and Weaving aren't quite up to their usual scratch. The film desperately wants to be in the same league as the great Hong Kong bent cop/revenge films (Hard Boiled, A Better Tomorrow, Crime Story ) or even US hybrids like The Corruptor or the average Training Day. The reason The Custodian never even comes close is the simple fact that the real drama here should have come not from reliance on the plot, but on the character interaction and themes of betrayal and friendship. Barry Otto + Hugo Weaving + Anthony LaPaglia + Bent Cops = The Custodian = a wasted opportunity. |
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Hugo Weaving content:You leave this film with the distinct feeling that there were some great Frank scenes left on the floor: he's a fleeting ghost; a potentially fantastic supporting part reduced to a plot mechanic. The film suffers as a result.Frank is confident, cynical, jaded, trapped into an ever-deepening web of corruption and crime because of the basic seed of human nature: greed. The scene where he takes Quinlan to Mr Big shows him in a sombre light. He hardly has any lines in this scene and the dramatic focus is on the other actors, yet it is Weaving who the viewer is drawn to: his body language and expression shows Frank as calm, watchful, resentful of someone else having power over him and regretful at seeing what the 'last boy scout' is allowing himself to do. |
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other decent Weaving scene is where Frank arranges to meet Quinlan in an
obvious set up to kill him. Frank knows that Quinlan is the traitor, Quinlan
knows that Frank knows, Frank knows that Quinlan knows he knows:
they are both sure that one of them will kill the other. As LaPaglia goes
to pick up his gun, there is fear, betrayal, sickness and uncertainty in
Weaving's face. A proper character-driven scene at last.
If only there had been more room for this stuff. |
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Key
Scenes:
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