Film Review - Quigley (1991)

Quigley is an Australian western directed by Simon Wincer who also made the Lighthorsemen from 1987 and concerns Matthew Quigley (Tom Selleck) who comes to Australia from Wyoming at the behest of Mr Marston (Alan Rickman) who wants him to get rid of the indigenous peoples encroaching on his ranch lands but things are never so simple when dealing with the Indigenous people.

Quigley is good fun and a nice little Australian Western that first off has some very nice widescreen cinematography by David Eggby who also did the first Mad Max film there are lots of nice landscape shots that really show off the Australian outback very well as a potentially inhospitable terrain that will make mice out of men (no wonder we gave the world Mad Max) plus there are some nice town shots that were partially filmed at Flagstaff Hill here in the South West of Victoria (Warrnambool to be precise.)

Also the film is very nicely anchored firstly by Tom Selleck who never got to be Indiana Jones (though that is no big loss in all honesty) but here he is a likeable and charismatic western hero who is good with a rifle and also the late great Rickman is every inch his equal if not more so than Selleck much like he was with Bruce Willis and Kevin Costner in those films and he has a scene or two that made me think of his infamous “And Call off Christmas” scene in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.

He is greatly missed.

And also keep an eye out for Jerome Ehlers, Roger Ward and a young Ben Mendelsohn in small roles.

And also I really liked that this movie subverted some Western tropes which are so often American for an Australian audience and the Indigenous very much play the part that the Native Americans would play in an American western and their side plot in this film was one I found very interesting and it had some resonance for the here and now I thought.

However the film is not without faults and a big one is Laura San Giacomo and don’t get me wrong she is okay but she also just can’t compete with Selleck and Rickman and a lot of her scenes as a result they kind of bothered me I could see what they were going for that kind of Princess Leia type of character but Carrie Fisher brought so much to that role herself and San Giacomo comes across as very weak at times.

And lastly the film is a little long it runs about 2 hours and it could’ve lost 5 or 10 minutes here and there without hurting the overall movie too much.

And so that was Quigley an enjoyable Australian western anchored by nice landscapes and a great duo of performances, 3 out of 5.