‘The Rover” is one of those collapse-of-civilization movies that makes the post-apocalypse look like not very much fun at all. Lawless outback, shotgun-toting banditos and even roadside crucifixions somehow add up to an experience that’s about as thrilling as your average trip to the post office.
In the second film from David Michôd (“Animal Kingdom”), Guy Pearce stars as a steely-eyed survivor with a past who sets the plot in motion when a trio of shrieking losers on the run from something steal his car. Since they leave behind their truck, he seems to have come out on top, but he doesn’t see it that way.
Girded for war, he scoops up the principal thief’s wounded idiot brother (Robert Pattinson, looking like he was scraped off the inside of a garbage can) and goes tearing through the Australian dust bowl in pursuit. Well, not tearing. More like moseying. I’ve met cacti that move faster than this film. I kept wishing Mad Max would show up to give everyone a slap and order them to pick up the pace.
Eric (Pearce) and Rey (Pattinson) make the film into a strange buddy road trip in which, depressingly, the ultimate destination seems not to matter very much. Nor, however, does the relationship: Michôd, who has a way of capturing a desolate landscape and a moody stare, fails to convince us that these two would spend any more time together than it would take Eric to torture Rey into revealing the location of his brother.
Despite the dense dust-caked atmosphere and a spiky, unnerving score by Antony Partos, Michôd’s film adds up to little more than existentialist moaning punctuated by the occasional gunfight.