In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER is a straightforward Australian western starring journeyman hero Tom Selleck as an American gunslinger who arrives in the rural outback in order to take a new job working for rich landowner Alan Rickman. Selleck's skill is with a super-powered rifle which can hit targets over 1,200 yards away.The problem with this film is its predictability. It's obvious from the outset that Rickman will be the stock villain of the piece and so it transpires. Rickman was going through a string of villainous turns after his appearance in DIE HARD in 1988 but is rather subdued in this film and was much better in the following year's ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES in a pure pantomime performance. He was the main reason I tuned in, anyway. Cult favourite Roger Ward plays a henchman alongside a young and ginger Ben Mendelsohn, a Hollywood treasure these days.Inevitably this film deals with racism in the treatment of Aborigines by the white settlers. The scenes with the Aboriginal characters are among the best in the movie and there are some pretty shocking violent moments in a film which otherwise has a TV movie feel to it. Selleck falls foul of the bad guys but you just know he'll get revenge come the stock climax. One interesting thing about the production is its depiction of mental illness, something that writers and producers usually shy away from, but it's handled quite sensitively here.

Sharpshooter Matt Quigley (Tom Selleck) travels from Wyoming to Western Australia hired by ranch baron Elliot Marston (Alan Rickman). He rescues Crazy Cora (Laura San Giacomo) from a bunch of rough men. She keeps calling him Roy. It turns out that the men work for Marston. Marston reveals that he needs Quigley to hunt down Aborigines which Quigley takes offense to. Quigley and Crazy Cora are left to die in the desert.This is an old fashion western out in the Australian outback. It's a bit too old fashion. Quigley is impossibly good especially for a gunslinger. What did he think he was going to do in Australia? For a man who shoots for a living, he objects to the job too quickly. He should at least shoot somebody first. Maybe Marston's men try to kill him for the gold in the Outback. Maybe he refuses to kill the children. These are the nuances this movie needs. Selleck is playing too much of a hero and too simple. He lacks the complex characteristics to filled the big screen.

Alan Rickman, a British actor of considerable talent, was so effective as the toothy, treacherous villain in "Die Hard" that he gets to play the same role here. This time he owns a huge ranch in Australia, has convict laborers, a gang of henchman, and bothersome Australian Aborigines who butcher an occasional cow. They're savages all right, just like the Comanche, but they're smart enough to stay just out of rifle range.Rickman is clever. None of these sneering, ruthless villains is ever truly stupid. He hires Matt Quigley, Tom Selleck, as an exterminator, although Selleck didn't know what the job entails. Selleck simply is the best long-distance shooter in the world and has a long, heavy, modified Sharps carbine to prove it. Why, with his supercharged cartridges and his complicated sighting mechanism, he can shoot holes in objects that are so far away that they're beyond the curve of the horizon.But when Rickman reveals the mission for which Selleck was hired -- namely killing every black man, woman, and child in sight -- he wordlessly scowls and throws Rickman through the dining room window. Now, Selleck is an engaging, lightweight actor, but this part -- the taciturn man of principle with unimaginable skills -- belongs to John Wayne.Rickman has his goons beat hell out of Selleck. They throw in a beating for Laura San Giacomo, who is there only to prove that Selleck is heterosexual. The two unconscious good people are taken by wagon a day's drive from the ranch and dumped to starve and die of thirst. The last of the two ruffians who have transported San Giacomo and Selleck makes the mistake of getting too close to Tom and bringing that big Sharps rifle. One hooligan down, by force of hidden knife. The other takes off at full speed in the wagon, while Selleck spends an agonizing minute or two getting himself together, loading the rifle, taking aim, almost passing out, and finally firing at a target so far away that it shimmers in the heat, like Omar Sheriff riding out the desert on his camel. Does Selleck hit his mark? Right through the head.There follows a drawn-out intermittent battle between Selleck and the girl, on the one hand, and Rickman and his snarling gang on the other. At one point, Selleck and San Giacomo fall exhausted into the dust, dying. They are rescued by Aborigines who apparently have the same spiritual healing power as the American Indians.The Aborigines have made Selleck and his rifle into an icon because he's protecting them from the predations of Rickman's men. Knowing this, Rickman baits a trap for Selleck by herding dozens of Aborigines to the edge of a cliff and kicking them off to their deaths, in hopes that Selleck will show up to rescue them. I realize this is so brutal that it sounds like a contrivance but it isn't. Check the fate of the aborigines in Tasmania, the ones who didn't survive to be kidnapped and transplanted to Flinder's Island, the ones who were rounded up and shot like animals in an attempt to exterminate them.Well -- why go on. I always get a kick out of a story about a man with almost superhuman skills. I identify with him because I have so many superhuman skills myself. And when Selleck's rocket-powered bullets hit those distant targets, there is a loud WHAP, the victim is yanked from his horse, and is dead before he hits the ground. Of course the bad guys do a lot of shooting too but they always miss.I don't think I need to tell you how it ends. Guess.

The sad thing about Quigley Down Under is that had this been done thirty years earlier the film would have warranted a major release the way a John Wayne or a James Stewart western would have had. Personally when I look at Tom Selleck and the way he plays the title character, I think James Garner. Selleck plays Matthew Quigley in the same dry, laconic manner that Garner patented.This western is about as southwest as you can get without dealing with penguins and icebergs. Selleck has come to western Australia in answer to an advertisement by a local rancher requiring a skilled marksman with a rifle. He takes the three month voyage from San Francisco and arrives at Alan Rickman's local Ponderosa. Remember this is Australia, a place settled by convict labor. On Rickman's spread it's mostly Scotch and Irish. But Rickman's problem isn't with them, it's with the aborigines.Which brings us to why he wants Selleck's services with a long rifle. Essentially he wants Selleck to hunt them down and kill them at a distance, a bit of ethnic cleansing. Fighting Indians was up close and personal at times. But just shooting people down like game, rubs Selleck the wrong way. He tells Rickman no with vigor. And that vigorous no gets Selleck and Laura San Giacomo a woman not playing with a full deck beaten up and thrown out in the outback with no means of survival. Of course they survive and we learn a lot about San Giacomo. The reason for her insanity, it's more of a defense mechanism to keep out the world, because she's done something terrible that her conscience won't leave alone. It's a beautiful performance, probably the acting highlight of Quigley Down Under.Of course there's plenty of action to satisfy any western fan on any continent. Alan Rickman is an especially loathsome villain, he makes his Sheriff of Nottingham in Kevin Costner's Robin Hood film look like a Girl Scout.And the aborigines do learn to appreciate Selleck and the payback he exacts. They come through for him at critical times in the film.Tom Selleck is a perfectly cast western hero, the kind I used to spend Saturday afternoon's watching.