18, 104 mins

What was God thinking when he invented the Australian Outback? Why paint these awesome sunsets for the pleasure of flies? North Queensland is the merciless setting of The Proposition, Nick Cave’s gripping 1880s “western”, and it’s one of the most powerful frontier films I’ve seen. Lyrical too. The correlation between the beautiful and the damned is the unforgettable theme. Violence is the pure and numbing way of life.

The opening credits flick through faded black and white photos of a murdered couple, tastefully dressed for the grave.

It rapidly transpires that this aimless slaughter is the work of Arthur Burns (Danny Huston), a mythical villain in these hard-bitten parts. Bounty hunters such as John Hurt have been trying to nail him for years. They’ve lost most of their wits and teeth in the process. Huston’s savage outlaw is as elusive and manically erudite as Conrad’s nemesis, Kurtz, in Heart of Darkness.

The responsibility of bringing him to justice falls on the grimy shoulders of Captain Stanley, a ruthless colonial soldier who clearly regrets the moment he and his genteel wife (Emily Watson) ever set foot in Australia. Ray Winstone is terrific in the role. Dressed in a sheet of bluebottles, he corners Arthur’s estranged brother, Charlie (Guy Pearce), and makes a proposition the loner cannot refuse. The details are as bald and spare as the title. Charlie has nine days to find and kill Arthur, or their 14-year-old sibling, Mikey, will hang on Christmas Eve.

“I will civilise this land,” mutters Winstone. His promise looks increasingly rash, scene by dusty scene. The pioneer folk are as bitter and twisted as an Old Testament tribe. They spook his wife and drift to public lynchings like the living dead. The director, John Hillcoat, frames these bigots to haunting perfection. By contrast there’s a romance about the untamed outlaws. They have the scruples of cockroaches but their respect for the beauty of this cursed earth is almost mystical.

There’s nothing sweet about the tension. Cave and Hillcoat crank the suspense with rare skill. They don’t stint on cruelty. The sickening, sometimes unwatchable, acts of human horror are ghastly expressions of despair. The camera refuses to flinch. Aborigines are treated like scum. Brains are splattered over rocks. The skin is stripped off a boy’s back at a public flogging. The craven desire to throw the first rock almost defines these parched and empty souls. It infects everyone it touches. Stanley most of all. He is fatally compromised by the trust he places in Charlie. It might not be the most original scenario ever pasted on a big screen. But the cast whittle marvellous performances out of stock parts.

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