Starring: David Wenham, Arlo Green, David Field, Gary Sweet
Distributor: Transmission Films
Runtime: 104 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2025
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
| 
| 
An ex-con returns to Australia after 20 years, gets detained. He faces old enemies, makes new friends in detention, and teaches his version of Australian mateship while staying ahead.
In 2002 there was an award-winning comedy-drama, Gettin’ Square, set on the Gold Coast. It was a story of drugs and corrupt police. One of the characters was the roguish Johnny Francis Spitieri, whom everybody called Spit. A trying-to-reform-addict in old-crumpled clothes and thongs, Spit provided a great deal of comedy along the way.
It is not necessary for audiences to have seen Gettin’ Square to enjoy this follow-up, focusing on Spit. In fact, the film has more than a few things going for it. Writer Chris Nyst is a criminal lawyer and knows the characters that he has created for the original and for Spit. Wenham has noted that he is an ambassador for Kings Cross’s Wayside Chapel and is very much aware of many variations on Spit. Both Nyst and Wenham won AFI awards back then and are candidates for 2025 with an even better script, and Wenham having lived with this character over a long time.
The screenplay brings the characters to vivid life. We laugh out loud then, only minutes later, some moments of deep humane pathos on serious themes, then laughs again and throughout some serious and violent sequences connected with the thugs and the law. As mentioned, these characters were in the original and there are some references back, some clips from the original – and, with such admiration for the court scene in the original, another court scene which is as good.
But, this time, Spit returning to Queensland on a fake passport and detained by the authorities, is more of a larrikin – an Aussie larrikin rather than a rogue. His face is now weatherbeaten. And he has his ambling gait, the thongs, the jeans, weary on the surface but pretty shrewd when he wants to be – and this is especially the case in the inner unexpected solution to his problems.
He is still pursued by the drug chief and the corrupt police (snarling Sweet and Field). But, on landing he is sent to a detention centre, encountering the refugees, listening to their stories. His dealing with them, teaching English, is enjoyable Australian comedy, especially in dealing with Australia’s and the world’s hyper-abundant F-word. Spit sees it not as an swear word but as an emphasiser (though he cannot quite pronounce that correctly). His class illustrating its variety of emphases is quite hilarious (even for those who do not yet use it) and is followed up with many variations on it throughout the film.
But, for pathos there is the story of Spit’s sister and their separation, foster homes, reunited, her son, her illness and the demands on Spit’s affection.
One of the clever aspects of the screenplay is the frequency of quips, word misunderstandings that provide a lot of wit. And there is the courtroom, David Roberts providing a prosecutor straight man to Spit’s mischievousness, and all about reading glasses. David Wenham shows how adept he is. We know he does serious well, but he really embodies the comic Spit. And he plays alongside a number of character actors, especially with New Zealander, Arlo Green, as a sympathetic Syrian refugee.
Teplitzky directed Gettin’ Square, Better than Sex (which also featured Wenham) and the excellent, The Railway Man.
This reviewer would enjoy watching it again and certainly laughing with it.
12 Random Films…
