Lucky Miles: 105 minutes. Rated: MA. Director: Michael James Rowland. Starring: Kenneth Moraleda, Rodney Afif, Sri Sacdpraseuth, website.
Lucky Miles is an outrageous buddy comedy set in the Western Australian wilderness; a film where mismatched characters face down communication difficulties and personality clashes to work together and overcome obstacles.
But the film also has a brazen finger plunged into more than one hot political pie.
It traces the ordeal of three men — Iraqi Yousif (Afif), Cambodian Arun (Moraleda), and Indonesian Ramelan (Sacdpraseuth) — whose destinies become entwined after they are abandoned on a remote stretch of WA coastline by Ramelan’s devious people-smuggler uncle (Sawung Jabo).
Set in 1990, the film resonates with the echoes of recent history: September 11 and the furphy of border security; the 'children overboard' and Tampa fiascos; even the Federal Government’s recent totalitarian intervention into indigenous Australia.
This topicality borders on prophetic, when you consider the film was conceived seven years ago, well before any of these events occurred.
"When I started working on this film I wanted to imagine what was going to be relevant in seven years time," says co-writer and director, Michael James Rowland. "I was trying to find a metaphor to speak to the world about things I thought would be front page news."
"I’d read Thomas Friedman’s book The Lexus and the Olive Tree about globalisation; he talks about how telecommunications and global markets are making us come in contact with each other, and how it’s great because we’re all going to make a buck. I felt what he was saying was true, but that a lot of little people are going to miss out."
"So the film’s genesis is not a reaction to Tampa or September 11; it’s about people who hitherto had nothing in common with each other, coming in contact with each other and, under a certain amount of stress, hoping to resolve problems."
Rowland admits the journey from The Lexus and the Olive Tree to Lucky Miles was not the route most people would have taken to explore the potential conflictive aspects brought about by our 'shrinking world'.
"I came across several true stories — for example, in the early 90s, 40 people from southern China were abandoned on the remote WA coast. Two weeks later one turned up on a cattle station...they got him help, did a search and found the other 39 people."
"I became