Second only to Mrs. Carey’s Concert, Red Dog is the best Australian film’s I’ve seen this year. There’s so much to like about this film that any imperfections are swept by the wayside. This film looks outstanding. It’s been sumptuously photographed in South Australia and every shot is filmed with a sense of grandeur. There’s a transcendent beauty about these large, open arid landscapes. They’re dusty, seemingly empty and yet always so attractive on the big screen. Director Kriv Stenders (Lucky Country) has also structured Red Dog with more confidence than some other local films. It’s framed by the bartender telling the story and then having other people come in and speak. Towards the end, the story continues from the bar and into the future. It’s a very similar device to something like Forrest Gump (1994). Through this unconventional technique a number of different characters and perspectives are voiced. Not all the characters are as stereotypical as they might seem either. There are some funny surprises because Red Dog is a continuously brimming with Australian humour, like when the miner Peeto (John Batchelor) tells Vanno that if he mentions one of his stories again the other miners are going to kill him. I love the film’s emphasis on foreign characters, highlighting Australian diversity, as opposed to having stereotypical blue-collar yahoos.