Ray Winstone deserves the "Steven Seagal Gold Star Award for mumbling in a low voice". Absolutely awful... did the director tell Winstone to speak unintelligibly, or was he too chicken to tell him to SPEAK UP and SEPAK CLEARLY? Also in this fil, again we have the dull Brad Pitt playing the part of a violent, vicious IRISH thug. The Irish accent is a broad caricature (I'm part Irish, btw). This flick is so bleak, with ao many long, drawn-out scenes. I simply could not finish it, had to eject the DVD. And thank God for subtitles, or I would not have been able to catch more than 10% of what Winstone slurred. NOT RECOMMENDED. 2/10 because there are some worse flims and because John Hurt lifted this crud a little.

I did not read any of the other reviews until I finally wrote my own . . . have wanted to do it for years, but am intimidated by the scope of this 2005 movie, from the acting, to the haunting scenes, all the way to minutia that is impossible to get out of your head. There are things in this movie that you cannot un-see or un-hear. Whether you ultimately love this movie or not, you'll never get it out of your brain.Americans make the best movies, right? Well, if that is your belief, this purely Australian/British ensemble will shake you to your core, from Director John Hillcoat all the way to the screenplay and music of Nick Cave, it is an Australian masterpiece.So, what stands out . . . I mean besides everything? The acting, the actors. If you want to see professionals, from famous to unknown, ply their trade, watch and listen, you're about to go on an actors' hayride.Let's pick one, to me previously unknown actor Tom Budge. One of those performances where every time he is on the screen, you want to turn to every other viewer and ask, "Did you see that?!? Were you listening, watching?" As a dirty, vile little scumbag of a character, he left his mark on cinema in this movie.Other fine performances? OMG, all of them, but how could you possibly overlook that Australian of all Australians, David Wenham? A perpetual favorite in so many Aussie settings and by so many other actors from down under, e.g., Nicole Kidman. His dialog is so precise, so contemptuous that just listening to him makes the viewer want to spit, to get the awful taste out of their own mouth.Summary: A movie for movie lovers, a violent and haunting travesty of mankind at its absolute worst . . . and best. Don't miss this one. I'm 70 and I've been watching movies since Scarlett enchanted us all. Let "The Proposition" haunt you.

The Proposition... a 2005 Australian / U.K. collaboration is a really very good movie . It is unforgiving in its relentless negative assertions of the human being.. It washes away the clean suppositions of the American "wild west", as told by great American movie directors over many decades. This is the real...TRUE GRIT... , a film that dares you to assume this couldn't have happened. O.K....its in the Australian Outback, but men are men...and when they are free to behave like savages...they will.(It is about survival too) It requires more than one viewing (all great movies do),if you can stand to see again--- the horror that lurks in all of the human psyche... its here for all to see. Ray Winstone (Captain Stanley) is brought from England to "clean up" a particularly nasty family of murderous thugs...the Burns Family. He is a tactical policeman who puts a daring operation into motion. He expects Charlie (Guy Pearce) to kill his brother Arthur (Danny Huston). The scheme is put into jeopardy by the poor judgement of the Judiciary. From that point...anything can (and does) happen. There are violent scenes here...But this is a small town in the Australian Outback in 1890. Violence was not.....un-common. This an above average Australian ("Western")..........Watch IT....!!!

Well, no matter how I rate this movie a lot of people are going to say that my rating is wrong. That is something that you probably can say about any rating for any movie. I feel it is especially true as far as this movie goes though. As you can see from my rating I was not exactly thrilled by the movie. That does not mean that it is a bad movie. Again, this you can say about a lot of ratings, especially my ratings.Okay, I guess I have confused everyone enough now so let me try to explain. As a piece of cinematic art this movie is excellent. The acting is quite good. I especially liked John Hurt as the literate bounty hunter but most of the main characters where performing admirably. The scenery is wonderful. The Australian outback makes for a excellent backdrop and it is indeed a nice change from the classical North American western sceneries.As a movie it falls flat though. In my opinion a movie should at least try to tell a story. Even if it aspires to be a piece of art it should try and tell a story that the audience can, in one way or another, follow. This movie have a basic idea of a story but it does not really tell a story. We never get to now who the bad guys really are, what they really did, except for a bunch of hints about killing and rape, or why. Heck, we never actually get to know of the guy the flogged to death where really taking part in the deed or not.Throughout the movie the bad guys are supposedly hiding in some place where it is impossible to get them so the main character tries to get the bad guys brother to kill him. Not very plausible at all. The governor, Eden Fletcher played by David Wenham, or whatever he as supposed to be was pretty much an asshole. Okay every movie has to have one but his role was never really developed. Once he managed to get the young kid, innocent or not, flogged we really do not see much of him for the rest of the movie.The end of the movie is much the same as the rest of the movie. Cinematically excellent but not much of a story. There is no real conclusion. It just ends in a sequence of well done scenes but without any real story behind it.Maybe I'm a too simple mind when it comes to these kind of movies but I, even though I appreciated the graphics that was shown on my TV-screen, I did not really enjoy it as a movie.