Film Review - Hawke (2010)

Hawke is the name of a telemovie based on the political life of the Labor party member Bob Hawke, the story here charts his days in the ACTU right up until his leadership spill in 1991.

Overall, I enjoyed Hawke and those with a keen sense of political history will to, although some younger viewers might have trouble connecting some of the dots as the events played out were a little bit before their time, Richard Roxborough was good as Hawke and having seen only a small amount of video footage of the real man, I thought that at times it was like looking at the real thing.

However, I also would have liked to have seen a little bit more, Hawke is a fascinating character in Australian politics and at times the film feels like it's skipping over a lot of stuff that might have been interesting such as the 1988 Bicentennial and the Australia Card, the other problem was that it made Paul Keating out to be the villain of the piece when it was clear Hawke had lost it by the time Keating stepped up.

All in all, I enjoyed it but I did have some problems, so a 2 and a half out of 5.