Australian
Screen

Clip description

The chase continues, this time on foot and BMX bike, with the goons in pursuit of Judy (Nicole Kidman), Goose (James Lugton) and PJ (Angelo D’Angelo). The friends skilfully run rings around Whitey (David Argue) and Moustache (John Ley) as they navigate a suburban shopping centre complete with water fountain, a pile of mattresses, an electrician on a ladder, bookshop display, busy pizza restaurant and an escalator.

Curator’s notes

This is one of many extended comic chase sequences which make up the body of the film. Director Brian Trenchard-Smith noted on a blog that this sequence has been replicated in a later Hong Kong film, but prefers to ‘think of imitation as the sincerest form of flattery’. He also comments, ‘It did not hurt to have future Academy Award winner John Seale behind the camera either’.

Earning more than 40 feature film cinematography credits across four decades, John Seale’s work includes The English Patient (1996), for which he won an Oscar, with additional Oscar nominations for Witness (1985), Rain Man (1988) and Cold Mountain (2003). Seale was inducted into the Australian Cinematographers’ Society Hall of Fame in 1997, awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in 2002 and received the International Award from the American Society of Cinematographers in 2011.

Trenchard-Smith also notes on the blog that the young child who sees the bikes on the escalator ('BMX wow!’) is his son, who retains his enthusiasm for bikes nearly 30 years later.