Reviewer Film Ratings:
Plot: 3 | Fun Factor: 4 | Gore: 4 | Nudity: 2 | Scare Factor: 3.5 | Overall: 4/5

Violently gritty
Reviewed by GregMO ROberts

When Christian’s daughter is killed and he is given a disturbing tape of her in an amateur porn video, the enraged father and pest controller goes on a vengeful rampage in an attempt to track down and punish those that lead to his daughter’s downfall. With little to initiate his personal investigation, Christian (Peter Marshall) follows loose leads and uses his unique torturous questioning methods to delve deeper and deeper into the life of the daughter he thought he knew. The Horseman is an Australian film directed Steven Kastrissios and is a surprisingly intense and gritty drama given that the basis for the film has been done and overdone in Hollywood for the past 30 years. Much of the film’s success can be attributed to Marshall’s portrayal of the passionately violent Christian. Marshall looks like standard father – meaning there are no Brad Pitt chisel’s on his face. And Christian’s vulnerability ground the film in realism as he takes some punishment himself while doling out a form of his own. Kastrissios’ script is loaded with grit and violence. A scene including a man’s penis and an air pump had me squirming in my seat (and that’s not the only private part torture scene). But it’s also wonderfully grounded in a developing relationship between Christian and Alice (Caroline Marohasy), a young runaway that Christian picks up along his journey. Their relationship is not sexual - which is a welcome change from the norm. It’s easy to connect that Christian sees much of his deceased daughter in Alice and he intends on being for her what he couldn’t be for his own. There are some great and memorable scenes in The Horseman. A limping Christian with a sledgehammer, various torture scenes and some down under beatings recur with undeniable frequency. The violence makes the film unforgettable and it might rank up there as one of the more realistic gratuitously violent movies of the past decade. Make no mistake about it, The Horseman is not the Australian version of Taken. Peter Marshall makes Liam Neeson look like Get Carter (Stallone not Caine) in bringing a vengeful and unrelenting determination to a winless cause. In short, The Horseman should be sought out by those that will have the stomach for the raunchy brutality. It’s a hard sit through and even the most hardened of audience’s will shift once or twice in their seat, but it is a damn good film and brings some fresh down under air to the DVD market.