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Heaven's Burning | Year: 1997 Classification: Thriller Directed: - Craig Lahiff Actors/Actresses: - Russell Crowe - Yôki Kudô An Australian Road Movie Gone Awry Heaven's Burning is a love story. Boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy and girl get into trouble. I don't want to blow the ending for you, but the title is indicative of the fate of our two lovers. Although the lead actors, Russell Crowe (Colin) and Youki Kudoh (Midori) try their best to establish a relationship, the film is too short to support any real character development. The plot is contrived; a young, innocent Japanese woman on her honeymoon with her staid, uninteresting husband, fakes her own kidnapping to be rid of him. Colin comes on the scene as a guy down on his luck and willing to do something illegal to solve his money problems. In a bank heist, for which Colin is the get away driver, Midori is taken hostage. Colin saves her from his companions and they set off across the outback. They are followed by Midori's jilted husband and the robbers who all seek vengence. The finale is fairly predictable and since you don't really get a chance to know these characters, sympathy for them at the end is limited. However, Russell Crowe is superb - you feel his fear when he is cornered in a hotel room by his pursuers, and the violence in that scene was so realistic that I could barely watch. There was a true element of the unpredictable that kept the viewer on the edge of his/her seat. The supporting cast does their job adequately, but in their defense they don't get enough screen time to do their make an impression. I would recommend it only to anyone who is interested in seeing Russell Crowe in an earlier work. Heaven's Burning Russell Crowe gives a great acting performance along with the other cast members who I thought were all great. This movie has one man out to kill his wife with little interest in asking questions and an Afgan and his son out for extreme vengence against Colin (very disturbing lines come from the Afgan). Oh, and guess what? They are both on the run together! I gave this film 5 stars for scenery, plot, film and acting perfomance. Positively operatic For some reason, revenge tragedies have gotten a bad rap ever since the ancient Greeks stopped writing them. Even Shakespeare's big attempt at a revenge tragedy, Titus Andronicus, generally draws sneers from critics, even though it is a very powerful play with some beautiful poetry (see the film Titus when you get the chance). In a number of ways, Heaven's Burning might be considered a revenge tragedy and it turns out to be surprisingly good. I'll be the first to admit that this isn't the kind of film that I would normally watch. And the film seemed a non-starter to begin with, with none of the characters seeming particularly interesting to me. Of course, that all changed when Russell Crowe as Colin made his first appearance onscreen. I've seen him in several other films in much higher-profile roles (The Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Master and Commander) and I can't honestly say that he made more of an impression on me in those films than he did in this little film that most people have probably never even heard of. This movie started out extremely slowly and gathered steam as it went along. I was uncertain at first whether I would be able to sit through the whole thing, but when it got to the part where getaway driver Colin bumps off the guy who is about to kill bank robbery hostage Midori (Yoki Kudo) even though she didn't do anything wrong (other than a lot of crying, moaning and whining), I knew I was going to stay tuned until the end. That's one of the things that distinguishes revenge tragedies; the hero does some act that sets in motion most of the other acts that eventually lead to his downfall. In this case, the man killed by Colin has a father and a brother who are not amused. I was reminded of Verdi's opera La forza del destino, where the hero Alvaro accidentally kills the father of the heroine Leonora in the course of an elopement, setting off the chain of events that ends with Alvaro also killing Leonora's hell-bent-on-revenge brother Carlo, who nonetheless manages to kill Leonora just before he dies. Getting back to Heaven's Burning, Midori also plays her part in her ultimate fate by running off and leaving her newlywed and rather boring husband Yukio (Kenji Isomura). Many folks have commented on the racist aspects of the plot; however, the fact that Midori and Yukio are both Japanese adds an additional layer to the story that would not be present otherwise, since Yukio's attempt at revenge is not only motivated by love but much more by the fact that he has been dishonored (he even tells his friend that he can't return to Japan from Australia, where he took Midori for their honeymoon). So both Colin and Midori have done things that lead to their ultimate downfalls, and just to make sure their fate is sealed, they have gotten the cops involved by robbing a bank. One other point where I was not certain I would be able to sit through the movie was the graphic torture scene. I couldn't even take comfort in the fact that C Buy Heaven's Burning at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  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