Last Wave, the

David Burton [Richard Chamberlain] is a successful, middle-class tax attorney in Sidney. When he volunteers to take the case of several Aboriginal men accused of murder, he has little inkling of where this supposedly simple case will take him. Coincidentally, he has recently been having nightmares, one of which involves a young Aboriginal boy. He finds that the men are withholding much information. He comes to suspect that they are part of a tribe and that the crime was dictated by tribal law. His colleagues insist that there are no tribes in Sydney. Not only is David right, he discovers that there is a mysterious link between the defendants and the strange weather that has recently plagued the region. The case turns into a spiritual journey, one fraught with unanswerable questions and great danger.

The laconic and underrated Chamberlain is excellent. The movie is not a thriller, and it builds to its climax slowly and deliberately. This makes Davidï¿s quiet descent into madness appropriate.

One of the filmï¿s greatest assets is Russell Boydï¿s cinematography. He beautifully captures the dichotomy between modern Sydney with its gleaming towers and the ancient world that lies hidden beneath them. His surreal, dreamlike camera work helps make up for this low budget effortï¿s lack of special effects.

By the way, an American equivalent to ï¿The Last Waveï¿ is the fascinating independent movie, ï¿The Raptureï¿ [1991].

Other recommended Weir movies are ï¿Gallipoli [1981], ï¿The Year of Living Dangerouslyï¿ [1982], ï¿Fearlessï¿ [1993] and ï¿The Truman Showï¿ [1998].

"I will show you a dream," he responds. "A dream is a shadow...of something real."

And, when you think about it, so are films. They are literally shadows of something real - recorded on transparent strips and projected onto screens with bright lights. Watching a good film is like dreaming while awake.

Peter Weir's The Last Wave has very much the texture of a beautiful, disturbing dream. Before going Hollywood and losing his artistic teeth, he made evocative little gems like this one - full of unformed dread and pregnant with the possibility of mythic revelation.

The plot concerns a routine bar fight between some Aborigines in Sydney, Australia, that ends in the death of one of them. Lawyer David Burton is called in as a Public Defender. No big deal - except that the case seems to involve a lot more than a Saturday night celebration gone horribly awry. It may, in fact, have everything to do with an ancient prophecy marking the End of the Current Age - and a catastrophe of alarming proportions. Can Burton unravel the mystery of the prophecy - and of his own true nature - in time to avert the End of the World as we know it?

Like a dream, The Last Wave unfolds with its own kind of logic - a logic that finds only a vague counterpart to our everyday sort of concrete reasoning. It's persuasive, too, the way any powerful dream always is. It makes us believe dialogue like I quoted at the top of this review, even though people never really talk that way in real life. It also forcefully reminds us that there is more than one culture in the world, and that we assume we are superior simply by virtue of our technology and science, at our own peril.

In many ways, The Last Wave makes me think of Werner Herzog, who also makes deliberately paced, dream-like films about cultural clashes. If you enjoy Herzog, give this film a look.

As a final note, The Last Wave probably deserves a thoughtful DVD release with a decent commentary track. Hint, hint, Criterion...

I mean, the third wave, for christ sake. It's over. Your outa here. Done. Would you be remembered as a quality addition to the human race? Really, "Who are you?"

I can add no more than my peers here, as all except one giant bozo found this film to be as good as I did.