Tomorrow, When the War Began (M). Director: Stuart Beattie. Starring: Caitlin Stasey, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Lincoln Lewis, Deniz Akdeniz, Phoebe Tonkin, Chris Pang, Ashleigh Cummings. 104 minutes
When I was in high school, it seemed as though everyone was reading John Marsden's Tomorrow, When the War Began series. Its claim to fame, like the Harry Potter books some years later, was that it was being read even by people who hated to read. I was a reader, yet I came to Marsden's books late, and enjoyed the firstthree or four books in the series. There were seven all up, so Iobviously didn't enjoy them that much.
The premise concerns a group of teenage friends from a rural Australian town — including local golden girl Corrie and her boyfriend Kevin, ditzy, girly Fiona, obnoxious but loyal Homer, straight-laced religious girl Robyn, enigmatic Chinese boy Lee, and sharp and strong-willed farm girl Ellie — who find themselves running and, eventually, fighting for their lives when Australia is subjected to military invasion.
Their town, it seems, is a strategic hotspot for this invading army of indeterminate origin (they are Asian in appearance, and a radio broadcast refers to them simply as 'coalition forces'), who have landed at a harbour not far beyond the fringes of the town.
When the invasion takes place, the teenagers happen to be ona camping trip, in a beautiful isolated valley — named, with unsubtle irony, 'Hell' — and thus elude capture. Their parents are not so lucky. Bookand film detail the youths' transformation from scared kids to guerilla soldiers fighting to protect their home.
The film is faithful at least to my decade old memory of the first book in the series. It comes complete with an in-built disclaimer for diehards who will inevitably be disappointed: an in-joke where two characters regurgitate the truism (not necessarily true) that films are always inferior to the books on which they are based.
Tomorrow, When the War Began is a competent action film and a bona fide action franchise in the making, although it may leave discerning viewers questioning the plausibility of some of its action sequences. More than being simply targeted at teens, the film seems tailored for year ten English curriculums: this is an issues-heavy film.
Teenagers commit extreme acts of violence, but the film is more All Quiet on the Western Front than Kick-Ass.Each character is tested by, and responds to their situation in different ways. The