Movie Reviews : Terrific What-If Premise of ‘Ground Zero’

“Ground Zero” (at the AMC Century 14 and the Cineplex Odeon), an Australian political thriller par excellence, opens with an eerie, otherworldly sequence of a World War II bomber being unearthed from a desert waste in the dead of night. Then it cuts abruptly to a silly commercial featuring dancing hot dogs being filmed in Sydney.

Starting with this deliberately puzzling juxtaposition, directors Michael Pattinson and Bruce Myles and writers Mac Gudgeon and Jan Sardi have made their swift yet complex film a highly compelling experience. Its point of departure is the actual 1984 Royal Commission hearing on the nuclear testing done by Britain in Australia between 1953 and 1964.

What if it could be proved conclusively that the tests were staged with a callous disregard for Australian military personnel as well as countless nomadic aborigines? How far would the governments of Britain and Australia go to suppress such evidence? “Ground Zero” is a terrific example of the “What if” movie. It also has broad implications for all countries who have ever engaged in nuclear testing, without regard to the consequences of fallout.

Neither of those questions is of much concern to Harvey Denton (Colin Friels), a busy cinematographer shooting that hot dog commercial. Uppermost in his mind is his anguish over a 3-month separation from his wife (Natalie Bate), a TV news reporter who has custody of their small son. While there’s no time to probe the causes of their estrangement, the idea of the family fragmented, and the pull of a father-and-son relationship abruptly aborted, will reverberate throughout the film, culminating in an extraordinary visual and aural metaphor at the film’s climax: Harvey looks at home movies featuring his long-dead father while listening to his own son on the phone. There’s nothing like the specter of nuclear peril to throw into relief the vulnerability of the nuclear family.

It’s when some of these old home movies are inexplicably stolen from Harvey’s apartment-studio that he is inadvertently plunged into high adventure, becoming a Hitchcockian hero who finds himself playing amateur sleuth. Friels creates an impeccably developed and sustained portrayal of an easy-going man, catapulted on a personal odyssey that becomes an urgent public mission as well. Jack Thompson is aptly ambiguous as a smooth agent of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization (ASIO), who disarms Harvey with his surprising candor. Donald Pleasence all but steals the film as a haunted man, confined to a wheelchair and speaking via a voice box, craving redemption.

“Ground Zero” (rated PG-13; too intense for youngsters) is a richly cinematic film, beautifully designed by Brian Thomson, sleekly photographed by Steve Dobson, ominously scored by Tom Bahler and tautly edited by David Pulbrook. Like a number of other key Australian films it is charged with anti-imperialist sentiments that in this instance deftly extend to America as well as the colonial’s eternal bete noir , Britain.