Asserting some historic moments of Australian culture on a film predominantly featuring Bill Nighy feels like a strange turn of form for director Tim Brown. Still, it is that name value that steers Buckley’s Chance well enough. It is a feature that hopes to show audiences that parting with history comes with a price. Maintaining it does, too, as found by Spencer (Nighy) and his historic property. At a time of unbiased gentrification of local areas, something like Buckley’s Chance has the ability to comment, vaguely or specifically, on how the environment around the living changes from entrenched in history to stuck in modernity. Estrangement takes the main tone of this family drama, though, and unexpectedly so.
Unfortunately, that comes with a price. The unlikeable stylings and the broadly refined tones leave little room for any real intimacy. Buckley’s Chance is a cut-and-shut movie that really has very little love for the outback or its history present on the screen. Brown (whose work on Treasure Hounds proves of little use here) does not offer much in the way of sentimentality. It is a quick editing introduction followed by some fairly feeble attempts at articulating comedy. American children are terrified by whatever a goat is and then come into view of an estranged family member. Nighy puts on his best Australian accent and comes through with about as much dignity as possible for a light and twee movie with little charm.
Huffy teens getting used to the great outdoors and exploring with a grandfather they do not know. Buckley’s Chance hopes to have that development going on underneath a series of familial dramas, troubles and struggles over land ownership and sheep. It is that keenness to learn in new surroundings, or the lack thereof which is present in Milan Birch’s performance. He and Nighy have the expected chemistry of a warring faction of estranged family members put together in a delicate matter of survival. It feels more and more like the plot of a Home and Away episode that finds itself hunted down by snakes and all the usual stereotypes of Australian culture. Experience meets innocence in survival in the great outdoors. Buckley’s Chance loses its way quite a bit when it starts to utilise the dog more than anything else.
Nighy manages to come through this bit of dullard dramatics relatively intact. The performances are not bad, the plot is comprehensive and simple, while the direction lacks a lot of the emotional clarity needed for a story hoping to convince, in its latter stages, that a character has been bumped off. By then, of course, the survival moments have been cemented and form the basis for a full-circle experience. Victoria Hill feels like a spare part here, the doting mother character feeling relatively tired as she watches on as her boy stars bushfires and brings about a whole slate of problems that have been conditioned by living in the United States. Still, at least the soppy ending comes through in relatively good time, it is just not a convincing one, nor is it a challenging or strong portrayal of grief in the face of gaining new family members while losing others.
