The Tender Hook
Dir Jonathan Ogilvie feat Rose Byrne, Hugo Weaving, Matt LeNevez (M)
By Angus Fontaine
Out of a crime noir fog comes The Tender Hook’s emblem image: the east-west spans of the Sydney Harbour Bridge reaching for each other across black waters. It’s a potent metaphor – in Jonathan Ogilvie’s film opposing parties wage elegant war via gloved fists, cut-throat razor and feminine wiles.
Hugo Weaving is McHeath, a gangland lord with a love for crooning and Shakespeare, who enforces his creed of “you’re either a leader or a bleeder” on a troupe of boxers, sly grog traders and his moll, Iris, by liberal use of a razor. Rose Byrne is in strange waters as Iris, the film’s heart. Prim, addicted and wily she may be but it’s a long bow to believe her cupid face belies a future as a cold and scheming underworld madam in the Kate Leigh-Tilly Devine mould. Yet Byrne goes very close, particularly in an affair with one of McHeath’s pugs, Art (Matt LeNevez), a handsome gun boxer who lacks killer instinct.
Ogilvie is an assured director – he lets his story bloom gradually like a cut invisible until the blood levee breaks. The dresses are divine, the score sublime and the film is beautifully shot by Geoffrey Simpson. For all its deco stylings, Melbourne’s gloss can’t evoke Sydney’s convict grit. Well crafted and deftly told, The Tender Hook ignores its own lessons: sex, violence and booze sells.
Read our interview with Jonathan Ogilvie - Director of The Tender Hook