Review of "The Final Winter"

The Final Winter opens with all the gravitas of an epic war film. Tough men, it seems, are preparing for battle. Honour, pride and glory are at stake. They are the last of a special breed of warrior, driven by the traditions of the past and blind to the tumultuous changes ahead. But hang on, this is not Thermopylae but Newtown, and the battle is Australian rugby league, the way it was played in the era of the biff in the 1980s, before sponsorship, professional players and multi-million dollar television rights.

The story centres on two brothers, Grub (Mathew Nable - who also wrote the screenplay) and Trent (Nathaniel Dean) who grew up playing first grade for the Newtown Jets. Grub is older and a hardened player with 200 games under his belt – a kind of Tommy Raudonikis character – for whom taking out the opposition is as much a part of the game as scoring tries. He doesn’t listen to his coach Jack (really well portrayed by ex-rugby league player Matt Johns) and he’s completely at odds with the new club chairman, real-estate agent Murray Perry (John Jarratt). Grub’s much younger brother Trent has more flair and has left the club because he doesn’t like the way Grub plays the game. There’s no love lost between the two brothers - caused as much by past problems at home, as their different attitude to the game. As the season comes to an end, Grub is under mounting pressure from all sides – a symbol of everything that is about to be swept away in the new era of corporate sponsorship and disciplinary tribunals.

The film is soundly enough made, but like the recent Australian film West, one has to believe that we have moved on from these kinds of stories with Ocker male characters drinking and fighting whilst their wives and girlfriends do the washing up or serve the beers. David Williamson’s The Club, directed by Bruce Beresford, set a high benchmark for the football story back in 1980 with its sharp exploration of backroom politics in the VFL. Of course, The Final Winter film is deliberately intended to be a nostalgic look back at a bygone era of footy, but ultimately it’s not about the game but about a handful of characters, and they are thinly drawn in a largely unimaginative screenplay. Directors Brian Andrews and Jane Forrest film most of the action indoors in tight scenes and let the cast overact – Jarratt in particular is unsubtle and unbelievable. The result is more like a television drama with few cinematographic moments.