I was out in Sydney during their Film Festival and just happened to see "Solo" being advertised at this cool little cinema down by the Opera House called the Dendy. I went and checked it out and have to say enjoyed myself thoroughly right the way through with some turns in the Movie that caught me off guard.The Aussie humour I dig so much and this movie captured it in spades. Found out later that the dude who made this film had won project greenlight and it was his first feature. This guy will go places and I'm looking forward to the next flick he brings out as I love that edge he created in Solo and I love a movie that I walk away thinking I should've seen it coming but I just got blindsided.Top Marks from me! Well done.

Having read the screenplay on Project Greenlight, I was keen to see how it turned out. It was true to the script, which is what one would hope when the director is also the writer, but there were scenes which could have been deleted without diminishing the impact of the film. When I read the script, I got the feeling of a comic-book story and there's nothing wrong with this--gritty, tough, seamy underside of a big city. Somehow the film didn't quite carry this across and seemed to be trying to add more credibility to what could be just a good, slightly-clichéd action flick. One thing that I thought was that it was shot on video. Some of the scenes definitely lacked the sharp crispness of film and I was surprised to see the Kodak logo in the end credits. I was also surprised that they could shoot it on film and keep it in the AUD1M budget. Shooting on video could have actually added a grainy dimension which would suit this film noir genre. The choice of music was as good as it gets.

I just watched SOLO last night. I went into it not expecting much so that once the film was finished i would hopefully be pleasantly surprised... I wasn't. Now I realise that the film was only made for a million dollars and that it all had to be done by the book, but this has proved time and time again to be detrimental to the Aussie industry. We need guerrilla film-making at the lower end simply because we have to make a million dollar film look like it's worth so much more. On the documentary which screened about the film (it was a project greenlight film, the first in Australia) it showed how due to restraints they could not lock down a car wash so they dressed an allyway to look like an Asian Laundry. now the set looked good, but when i went to see the film you couldn't see any of the set design because of the poor choice in coverage and because they decided to use a long lens.Now it's not all the technical stuff which got to me, the writing and performances, the clichéd storyline also hit me hard. Solo comes across as a film noir, which is such a staple of American film-making but fails to translate well on the Australian screen, i'm sure in the future someone here will actually be able to do it but for the time being... they can't.Now the plot: Barrett (Colin Friels) play's the age old clichéd character of the hit-man who wants to get out of the business but can't leave until he does one last job. It's a tired plot device and I for one am sick of it. His last job of course is to kill off Billie (Bojana Novakovic) who is a nosy uni kid digging too deep into the underworld. Now becomes an exercise in fitting in as many clichéd scenes as possible. everything you think will happen does happen. 1) he can't kill her but instead falls for her 2) there are crooked cops how also want him dead 3) he's sleeping with a hooker (cause as we all know hit men can't have a stable relationship) 4) there are other gangs that want to see him dead, yet no one can seem to kill him. 5) an automatic uzi still can't kill a man with a single revolver 6) when the cops corner our hero about to kill him their crooked chief will arrive to say goodbye then of course leave before the 'killing' is done leaving our hero to escape 7) (you'll get this when you watch it) if you're 80+ and can still play piano with just one hand in an earlier scene then why think you life is over when some fingers on one hand are broken.there are other clichés too, like the ending (which i won't spoil) but lets just say that anyone with half a brain can figure it out about 30min into the film and it doesn't come as a surprise or a shock like the director intended... simply because this ending has been recycled from sooo many other films.all the actors (and i do realise that there was No rehearsal time at all) seem to just walk through their performances. the characters and o two dimensional it's hard to care about any of them, especially Barrett who we are supposed to latch onto. Look it's not a bad film but it's most definitely not a good one either. all i can say in it's support is that at least it got made. the sate of the Australian film industry is on a massive decline and more private investors are needed so it's good to see it at least get made within a year instead of the usual 3-10 year waiting period that usually occurs with most Australian films, so for that i applaud it.

This is a pretty cool Aussie crime flick in the style of Two Hands, Chopper, Dirty DEeds, Getting Square, etc. More serious and less comedic than some of those films but with a style of it's own.The actors are all very good as is the directing and the camera-work. Morgan O Neill the director spoke after the screens and shared some interesting tit bits about the production of the film.... it cost only one million and a bit to make and was shot in only 21 days. COlin Friels is especially good as the main character who is a hit-man.All in all well worth watching especially if your a fan of movies like lock stock or Pulp fiction.