X: Night Of Vengeance More proof, as if it were needed after last year’s Snowtown and Sleeping Beauty, that the Australian male is a thoroughly despicable, nasty piece of work

X: Night Of Vengeance

More proof, as if it were needed after last year’s Snowtown and Sleeping Beauty, that the Australian male is a thoroughly despicable, nasty piece of work, Jon Hewitt’s X: Night Of Vengeance takes the Pretty Woman fairytale life of a hooker up a dark alley and beats it until it’s raw and bloody.  Graphic, brutal and gritty, it’s a dark, edgy thriller that somehow manages to be sexy and provocative at the same time as being uncompromisingly bleak. 

Beautiful, elegant and poised, high-class call girl Holly (Viva Bianca) made herself a vow that she’d quit the life by 30 and move to Paris.  Today is her 30^th birthday, she’s said her goodbyes, her bags are packed and she’s got a strictly one-way ticket to Paris in her handbag.  All she has to do is make it through one last night on the job.

For vulnerable 17-year-old runaway Shay (Hanna Mangan-Lawrence) it’s her first night on the mean streets of Sydney’s Kings Cross.  Homeless, hungry and inexperienced, she sells herself for $20 a pop to the kerb crawlers who prowl the red light district.

Fate throws the two women together when Holly needs a second girl for her last job and impulsively recruits the young streetwalker.  It’s an easy gig, partying with a coked-up, big-spending criminal.  But the fun comes to an abrupt end when the girls witness the crook’s murder at the hands of business partner and corrupt cop Bennett (Stephen Phillips).  Escaping into the vicious, dangerous, neon-splashed twilight world of Sydney’s sleazy underbelly, hunted by a relentless killer, the girls are going to have to rely on each other if they’re going to survive the night…

Opening with a frank scene of almost clinical eroticism which will confirm most men’s fears of what actually goes on at all those Tupperware and Ann Summers parties (Holly and a handsome young man-whore put on a show for a coffee morning of middle class hausfraus), the film thrusts the audience straight into the sordid glamour of jaded escort Holly’s life.  Focused and driven, she’s on the verge of escaping the business and realising her dream life.  At the other end of the spectrum is the teenage Shay; a desperate innocent who reminds Holly of the girl she used to be.  With a minimum of elapsed screen-time, Hewitt and co-writer McClory (who also appears as Holly’s friend and mentor) deftly give us two heroines we actually come to know and like before putting them through hell. 

And the world X: Night Of Vengeance depicts is a hellish one, peopled by hookers, junkies and hustlers.  It’s a world of corruption and depravity, of seedy strip bars and pay-by-the-hour hotels.  Predatory street scum prey on the weak, callous johns exploit young girls for sex, the cops are killers.  The film is suffused with a growing sense of dread, from the moment you learn of Holly’s intention to retire, you know it’s going to end in tears.  Packed with explicit and, at times, gratuitous nudity, X: Night Of Vengeance simmers with a carnality that always threatens to tip over into brutality.  When the film finally explodes into violence it’s almost a relief, killer cop Bennett’s viciousness and rampant misogyny the seemingly logical end result of the commodification of sex.  Hewitt never eases up on the intensity, never allows the film’s salacious subject matter to undercut the suspense or detract from the plight of his heroines.

As the older, wiser Holly, Spartacus: Blood and Sand’s Viva Bianca is terrific; a tough, no-nonsense operator, she’s no hooker with a heart of gold.  She’s a survivor, forced against her will and against her own nature into caring for and protecting the younger Shay, Bianca’s glacial beauty and calculating intelligence lending Holly an ambiguity to match her steel and decency.  Similarly, Hanna Mangan-Lawrence’s Shay is no helpless damsel in distress.  Young and inexperienced, Shay’s innocence masks her own gritty determination to survive and Mangan-Lawrence’s fragility and fearlessness make Shay a heroine to root for.  Both these women may be victimised but Bianca and Mangan-Lawrence aren’t playing victims; they’re playing women battling their diminishing options, trying to take control of their own destinies.  As virtually the only decent man in the film Eamon Farren is sweet and winning as the taxi driver and wannabe magician who may offer an alternative future to the novice Shay while Peter Docker and Stephen Phillips lend menace as Holly’s boyfriend/punter and murderous cop Bennett.

Smart, violent and sexy with a real propulsive drive and boasting two fantastic central performances, X: Night Of Vengeance is a breathless odyssey through Sydney’s hellish underworld.

David Watson

Director

Jon Hewitt

Writers

Belinda McClory & Jon Hewitt

Cast

Viva Bianca, Hanna Mangan-Lawrence, Peter Docker, Stephen Phillips, Eamon Farren, Belinda McClory, Freya Tingley

Country

Australia

Running time

90 minutes

Year

2011

Certificate

18