The Nothing Men describes a room full of undirected and misdirected men, a ticking timebomb of testosterone that starts off describing the uncomfortable limbo of industrial decline and ends up somewhere a lot lazier.

Six men sit in a room in a factory that is shutting down local operations. Given the option of moving state to continue their trade, or be made redundant and literally wait in a room during working hours for six months as the clearances on their payouts inch ever closer, the men choose the stasis of an empty warehouse and each other’s company, spending the time drinking, gambling, and talking crap, with an uneasy kind of comraderie, at best bordering on mild passive-aggressiveness and at worst a stifling kind of actual aggressiveness. But when a new man is transferred to their set up amongst talks of industrial spying and the cancellation of payouts and firing under conduct charges, paranoia grows among the six. And becomes something a lot worse.

Making up the warehouse of bored miscreants are archetypal figures including the blue collar alpha male Jack (Colin Friels) who harbours a pregnant teenage daughter; the pretty boy, the hippie stoner, the greasy yet virginal perv and the level-headed pacifist Wes (Martin Dingle Wall) who himself harbours guilt towards his part in a drink driving accident years before. Armed with the requisite hidden back stories, then tensions rise and coagulate towards the seemingly normal figure of new guy David.

To its credit, the film has passages of great dialogue and characterization, and effortlessly shifts gears from brutal black comedy to keenly written brutality, while keeping up a keenly observed sense of blue collar masculinity in the writing. It never quite shakes its theatrical origins in the execution, but efforts are made to realise the story away from the stage on a cinematic scale. The performances across the board are strong, particularly Friels, whose Mad Dog persona inhabits Jack with utter conviction.

The film is also technically notable for being the first Australian film to be shot on the Red One, digital cinema’s next gen answer to traditional film shooting. This allowed it to be completed on a budget of $600,000 while maintaining the kind of high end technical finish usually associated with local productions of a much greater budget; it’s also in contention to be the first released feature film in the world shot on the Red (a race it may have won, lost or drawn against Steven Soderbergh’s Guerrilla). For the standard of its completion alone, The Nothing Men is a significant film that points to the advancement of technology in local industry, bringing with it the advancement of opportunities for production.

It’s a shame, then, where the story actually goes. There’s a slight sense of the proceedings quickly and awkwardly transforming from a jittery working class version of 12 Angry Men to a pretty standard genre piece reminiscent of films like Taxi Driver. Not to mention La Haine’s final moment, which more or less also ends The Nothing Men, and here it feels reductive - the film has narrowed its focus to be about the consequences of plain old cruelty, with the sneaking thought that there are more interesting things to be investigated on offer.

Even in its minor dramatic points, The Nothing Men can ask a lot from the audience’s suspension of disbelief, in the some of the more dramatically redundant contrivances, and the awkward and occasionally unnecessary way it tries to connect character.

The Nothing Men, despite the fault of its narrative logic and an ending that swaps the possibility for moral complexity with yawnsome bloodletting, remains a quality and interesting local production that deserves to find an audience on the strength of its setup and the dedication of its performances.

Review by Al Cossar

The Nothing Men does not currently have a national or international distributor. 

Cast: Colin Friels, David Field, Martin Dingle-Wall
Director: Mark Fitzpatrick
Screenplay: Mark Fitzpatrick