Quigley Down Under (1990)
This ain’t Dodge City, and you ain’t Bill Hickok.
THE SUMMARY: A Wyoming sharpshooter is recruited to Australia, but he won’t shoot Aboriginals, so he kills the guy who hired him and picks up a broken wife instead. It’s a fairly standard western - it’s just the Indians are replaced with Aboriginals. It’s a perfectly fine watch, but there’s little to nothing remarkable about it.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER SPANDEXLURCH: Tom Selleck stars as Quigley, an American sharpshooter on an adventure in Australia. Co-starring the late great Alan Rickman, this is an underrated classic.
JAMIE AND JEANNE’S AI FACESWAP ART:
A proper authority arrangement.
Diversity is Blonde’s strength.
If this show ever ends, quick-draw duel is an appropriate way.
You can still call me Matthew.
Quigley should’ve picked one of these two.
THE BEST:
Generic western stuff: If you like westerns, there’s plenty to enjoy here. Shootouts, impressive marksmanship, a duel, the damsel in distress, horseback sprints, the rugged good guy taking out the over-confident bad guy, etc. It’s not that any of these things are done poorly, it’s just that none of them are anything that hasn’t been done a million times before. It’s a perfectly safe formula that’s made many successful movies.
Selleck-Rickman is a decent combo: Quigley and Marston are well-cast roles. Selleck is the right mix of tough and lovable. Rickman, as always, is a great villain. Selleck did several other westerns, though many were made-for-TV. As far as I’m aware, Quigley is the only western that Rickman ever did.
Best interest of the child: I appreciate the plot point that Cora and Quigley gave the rescued Aboriginal child back to the tribe. I thought the story would become her adopting the child to recover from her prior tragedy - instead she did the right thing. Why is it the right thing? Because that child staying within his tribal community is in his best interest. Just as an orphaned child best belongs with his extended family, this child does too. Cora put the kid’s interest ahead of her own, and that’s admirable.
A Red Dead Redemption influence?: Red Dead Redemption, the original and the sequel, are among my favorite video games of all time. So immediately I noticed the Marston name: the antagonist in this movie, and the protagonist in the first Redemption. Perhaps that’s coincidental, but as another observer notes on Reddit, Elliot Marston in Quigley does bear a strong resemblance to Dutch, the first Redemption’s villain. If the influence is real, it earns credit from me. Anything that contributed to the Red Dead masterpieces deserves recognition.
Never said I didn't know how to use it.
I only shoot buckets, not brown people.
THE WORST:
It’s not really all that ‘down under’: If I didn’t know, there’s not much in this movie to indicate it’s actually in an Australian setting. Yes, the Aboriginals replace the usual American Indian role, and Quigley and Cora observe kangaroos for about five seconds, and she has to fight some dingos for five seconds more, but that’s about it. Nobody even drinks a Foster’s or eats a blooming onion from Outback.
I’m kidding, of course, but only kinda. In fairness, the movie was filmed entirely in Australia. It’s just that Australian culture was largely irrelevant in the movie. It’s an American western that just happens to be in Australia. Some of that could be due to the time setting - it’s in the 1860s, so perhaps the full Steve Irwin and Crocodile Dundee concept had yet to form. But the British colonization and development of the continent is roughly on the same timeline as the United States. There was plenty going on in Australia at the time, but this movie feels more like Deadwood just got dropped in the outback and they called it good.
Occasional anti-white nonsense: I wouldn’t say Quigley is overt racial propaganda, but there are plenty of themes to that effect. Whitey is the bad guy, and the Aboriginals are victims, even though like the American Indians, the Aboriginals were slaughtering each other en masse before the first white guy ever showed up. Elliot Marston is supposedly bad for saying the British brought ‘civilization to the stone age’ in Australia, even though that’s absolutely correct. Marston’s slave rips off his ‘white guy’ clothes and runs off into the bush, as though that’s actually a better life.
Most ridiculously, Quigley answers an ad to shoot people, or at least an ad for a sharpshooter which implies shooting people, but no - he won’t shoot those people. So he gets violent with the host, defects, and shoots white people instead, because it’s somehow morally superior. What did Quigley think he was answering an ad for, and why does he travel all that way just to refuse the job on what appears to be a racial basis?
Quigley is practically a militant Black Lives Matter activist - if anybody says anything critical about the tribesmen, he’ll kill them.
The ending is silly: Yeah, I know it’s just a fun western, and getting technical about it can miss the point, but several of the premises of the ending are very difficult to accept, if not outright silly.
Quigley gets dragged over the landscape behind a horse, but then just gets up and is not just fine, he can successfully outshoot three guys? His arms would have been dismembered miles ago.
After Quigley kills Marston and his men, the British show up to arrest him, but somehow every Aboriginal on the continent arrives to scare the British away. This plot point is absurd for two reasons: 1) Marston’s slave left the ranch five seconds ago, but somehow alerted hundreds or maybe thousands of Aboriginals to show up on a moment’s notice? 2) how likely is the British army to be bullied out of such a scenario? They have rifles and horses. The Aboriginals have… spears. And face paint. And man boobs. There’s no way the British cower in this situation, nor should they. They would have been stacking bodies.
Yes, the redcoats are no match for... the tribal spears.
Quigley is a BLM activist.
THE RATING: 3/5 Wickies. Plenty watchable, but hardly memorable. More kangaroos, wallabies, and boomarangs and less bending over for the Aboriginals and I would have liked it more.
YOUR RATING: Vote here ⬇ Note: if you get a notification saying you have already voted and you haven’t, this is because of an issue with iOS (Apple mobile devices). Try voting on a desktop or laptop computer.
NEXT WEEK: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
AFTER THAT? YOU PICK - VOTE! September’s nominations come from listener Nick. In a twist to the movie selection process, in addition to Nick’s five nominations, Blonde has submitted one movie nomination, and Matt has too. You will not know who submitted the movie picks until a movie is selected. Note: if you get a notification saying you have already voted and you haven’t, this is because of an issue with iOS (Apple mobile devices). Try voting on a desktop or laptop computer.
Want to be the movie nominator for the month? Here’s how - fill out the form below. Note: once you are entered, you are eligible for selection on an ongoing basis. One entry per participant - multiple entries will be rejected.