The Rover Clips Paint A Grim Post-Apocalyptic Picture

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

The next two weeks will each deliver highly-anticipated post-apocalyptic films to our movie theaters. June 27, coincidently enough the same day Michael Bay’s Transformers: Age of Extinction blasts into theaters, Bong Joon-ho’s long-awaited Snowpiercer finally arrives. But before that, David Michod’s The Rover drops on June 20, though if you live in LA or NYC, you can see it starting this weekend. (I saw both this week, and made two new additions to my running list of favorite movies of the year.) We now have new collection of clips that should gauge your enthusiasm for film.

The Rover is a moody, deliberately paced pseudo western that takes place ten years after a massive economic collapse. It’s like watching a Cormac McCarthy novel come to life. This is a grim world full of grim people. The action follows Eric (Guy Pearce) as he methodically tracks a group of men who stole his car. Along the way, he meets Ray (Robert Pattinson), the brother of one of the men, a simple, naïve man-child who was shot and left for dead, and who may be far too soft for this world.

This first clip shows Eric pursuing his car across the rugged Australian outback, and his initial attempt to be as reasonable as he can be in his attempt to reclaim what is his.

In this clip, Eric first meets Ray, who is horribly wounded, and also trying to track down his brother Henry (Scoot McNairy). This is the beginning of an unlikely, not friendship, but cooperation between the two that starts to grow and evolve over time.

The still, quiet feel of this clip is a good illustration of the overall aesthetic of The Rover. You can expect a number of scenes with a similar feel, though Michod (Animal Kingdom) never lets the film get stale. This also gives you some insight into the world. Though there was a large-scale collapse, some infrastructure still remains, like the military and trains. Along the way you learn that this is essentially a lawless frontier, but in places like Sydney, there is a more established government and law and order.

We’ve already written about this clip, but it is worth watching again. If you didn’t already understand exactly how grim a man Eric is, this scene definitely drives that home. It’s like watching that old Saturday Night Live sketch “Who’s More Grizzled?” and this is how much of the interaction between he and Ray go down, with the younger man showing his naiveté, and Eric grinding that into the dirt.