Mystery Road
| Mystery Road | |
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Theatrical film poster
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| Directed by | Ivan Sen |
| Produced by | David Jowsey |
| Written by | Ivan Sen |
| Starring |
Aaron Pedersen Hugo Weaving Jack Thompson Ryan Kwanten Tasma Walton |
| Music by | Ivan Sen |
| Cinematography | Ivan Sen |
| Edited by | Ivan Sen |
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Release date
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Running time
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118 minutes |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
Mystery Road is a 2013 Australian crime film written and directed by Ivan Sen. It was screened in the Special Presentation section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. A sequel entitled Goldstone was released in 2016.
Near the rural town of Winton, Queensland, a truck driver finds the body of a teenage aboriginal girl named Julie Mason inside one of the drainage culverts under the road. Newly promoted aboriginal Detective Jay Swan, recently returned from training in the city, investigates the murder. He learns that Julie was a drug addict who would have sex with truck drivers for money. He questions another local aboriginal girl, Tani Williams, who is friends with Julie, but she refuses to speak to him. A neighbourhood boy tells Jay that he found Julie's phone and gives it to him. Jay finds several text messages to his teenage daughter, Crystal. He visits his ex-wife Mary and speaks to Crystal. He asks her if she wants to move to the city with him, but she declines. Mary tells Jay that it is too late for him to be a father. Jay searches a farm near where Julie's body was found and meets its owner, Sam Bailey. Before Jay leaves, he sees a young man leaving in a white hunting truck. Jay later finds out that another teenage aboriginal girl has also gone missing.
One night, Jay observes his colleagues, Johnno and Robbo, visiting a suspicious building in the country. When they leave, he follows them. They stop and flag him down, and Johnno attempts to intimidate Jay, asking if he has ever killed anyone accidentally. Jay later asks his boss about Johnno and is told that Johnno had some unspecified trouble on his previous job in another location, but that he is close to making some big arrests.
Jay visits the Dusk till Dawn motel after hearing that Julie used to go there to sleep with truckers. When he asks the motel owner about frequent guests who stayed there on the night of Julie's death, she tells him about a white man registered under the name "William Smith", who drives a white hunting truck. Jay realizes it's the same truck he saw leaving Sam Bailey's farm earlier. He returns to Sam's farm where he encounters Smith who insults Jay, refuses to let him search his truck, and states that he works as a kangaroo hunter and is an expert shot. Jay goes back to the police station and searches for Smith's police record, but fails to find one. Instead he finds that Smith is actually Sam's son, Pete, a man with a long criminal record, and that Pete had last been arrested for drug possession by another local police officer who had recently been killed on the job. Jay visits the widow of the deceased police officer, who tells him that the officer had been called to work by another, un-named police officer on the night that he was killed.
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