Tomorrow, When the War Began

Tomorrow, When the War Began - film review

I discovered this little gem around Christmas time but never got round to actually watching it until the new year when my brother had watched it and recommended it. For some reason or other the description on IMDB didn't appeal to me and as ever some of the reviews on there were highly critical. But what do these people know about movies, right? Warning - may contain spoilers.

Tomorrow, When the War Began is set in Australia and tells the story of the country being invaded from the perspective of a group of teenagers who happen to be in the bush camping when the actual invasion takes place. It's the weekend of an annual town show and for a change they decide to get away from it all and get back to nature. After a couple of days in Hell, the name of their little spot of paradise, they return to the suburbs of their home town to discover that no one is around and all the power and all forms of communication are dead. A foray into town to find out what is going on reveals that the townspeople have all been captured and are being held.

Things really begin to kick off at this point as Elle (played by Caitlin Stasey, recognised from Neighbours) is spotted shortly after witnessing the invaders murder one of the locals and suddenly a hail of bullets descend on the frightened teenagers. It becomes self evident right from the start that Elle is not one to stand by and do nothing as she fights back right from the start and in her words, "has blood on her hands". Later on the young woman of steel surfaces again as she takes on Chris, the local stoner who has somehow missed the entire invasion in a cloud of self induced oblivion. Chris had been left on watch but had fallen asleep, this infuriated Elle and she flew off the handle and told him "You might as well kill me now", as she pointed his gun at her chest. These are just a couple of examples of the warrior within which has been forced to the surface. There's a soft and gentle side to Elle though and there is definitely a spark between her and Lee (Chris Pang), but the movie doesn’t really take this any further focusing instead on the survival of the group.

Tomorrow, When the War Began The interaction between the teenagers as the story unfolded kept my attention much more thoroughly than I had expected. Each of the characters have a good level of complexity, are interesting and quite believable; a combination of good acting and an excellent story is perhaps what makes this possible. Homer (played by Deniz Akdeniz) is the local bad boy, of Greek decent he has a healthy and quite playful disrespect for the law. He's funny. a little bit mischievous and despite all the bravado, doesn't feel he's good enough for Fiona (played by Phoebe Tonkin) who is the good looking girl in town, the one that must get asked out all the time. The truth is a different story, although Homer doesn't know this until much later.

Despite being very enjoyable, I would say that this movie was quite predictable, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Personally, I sometimes am in the mood for a film where I can sit back and passively enjoy the story without having to work too hard. A good thinking man's film has it's place, as does a kick back and enjoy flick such as this one. By the way, on the subject of being predictable, if you have ever seen Red Dawn then you'll already be quite familiar with this movie. It's very, very similar indeed. The difference is that this is just the start, whereas in Red Dawn the story was quite a bit further along. There was even some similarity as to how they group looked in the closing scenes, all dressed up like soldiers with guns, Lee had on his back an RPG and this I remember being the weapon of choice in Red Dawn.

If I could (or wanted to) nit pick with this movie then I'd have to say that the invading enemy in this case were rather incompetent. Australia is a big place, but there were quite a large number of them and this small group of teenagers weren't exactly very good at staying hidden. Using flares to identify the house they were hiding in so that a bomber could flatten it just seemed a bit clumsy to me. Why stop at the house? Surely once it had been identified those inside are going to do a runner? Wouldn't it have made more sense to carpet bomb a wider area just to make sure? Also, the soldiers seemed to do a lot of shooting with not a great deal of hitting anything. Of course if they had been as efficient as British soldiers for example then there wouldn't have been much of a movie. It was just a little bit unbelievable in places. Surely that helicopter would have been equipped with some thermal imaging cameras for example. The people inside would have been obvious to begin with without the need to go lower to the ground and have the spotlight shot out. Just a few things really, but in the whole scheme of things it didn't really hurt the movie.

So to sum up Tomorrow, when the war began - I'd seriously give it look because it's very entertaining. If you want a nice easy film to watch with a bit of action and in interesting story then this definitely fits the bill. By all accounts it's quite faithful to the book (or series of books) so I'm quite tempted to give them a look too. Hopefully this film won't be the end and they'll make a sequel or a TV series. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Tomorrow, When the War Began - film review

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