Urban redevelopment in Sydney, Australia circa the early 1980's with a dark twist of violence and a moody soundtrack, nicely filmed in color, all set during the summer/Holidays, taking place sometime during the days leading up to Christmas to a crazy and out of control looking New Year's Eve in the midst of a brutal heatwave. Weaving in and out of topless bars, squatter's rights, construction unions, murder, seeping groundwater, and ruthless high rise corporations. It's sort of a story of the haves against the have-nots with Judy Davis as a leader of a group of squatters who are literally thrown out of their building by thugs to make way for a new development named Eden, and Richard Moir as the idealist architect who's designed the project. Of course they get to know each other rather intimately as Moir's character finds out about the greedy developers who back his design. There is quite a bit of politics, but Philip Noyce, the director who gave us Dead Calm, steers everything into a pretty intense concluding segment culminating in a very big rainstorm.
Review of Heatwave
