For a film about one of the most confronting and uncomfortable episodes of recent Australian history, 'Down Under' is bizarrely risk-averse, even polite. Jason Di Rosso reviews Abe Forsythe's new film about the Cronulla Riots.

For a comedy about an event as painful and scarring as the Cronulla Riots, it's surprising how mild-mannered Down Under is. Its writer-director, Abe Forsythe (Ned), might have gathered a talented cast to animate wonderfully grotesque suburban characters, but he seems unwilling to take on any powerful targets.

Why would you make a film about Cronulla without featuring a talkback radio shock jock or right-wing politician? In the Q&A session after the premiere at the Sydney Film Festival this week, Forsythe explained that he didn't want to point the finger at anyone.

This lack of a broader context, or any explicit critique, means the film presents its story of two very different groups of young men—one Arab, the other Anglo—as almost interchangeable.

There's barely any acknowledgement of how being a disenfranchised minority, or part of an enabled and privileged majority, however rogue, might be important.

Set in the wake of the Cronulla riots, Down Under unfolds over the course of a day and night, and follows two motley carloads of young men from opposite ends of Sydney looking for trouble in their rust buckets.

From Cronulla there's the hothead ringleader Jason (a sunburnt Damon Herriman) and his mate Ditch (Justin Rosniak), with a face completely bandaged after recent tattoo work. They commandeer the car of reluctant stoner Shit-stick (Alexander England) who brings along his younger cousin (Chris Bunton), who has Down syndrome and acts as the film's voice of reason.

The western suburbs crew is comprised of short-fused ringleader Nick (Rahel Romahn), his mate, a rapper named D-Mac (Fayssal Bazzi) and the reluctant Hassim (Lincoln Younes) who hopes against reason he might find his missing younger brother on this adventure. Along for the ride is Hassim's devout, bearded uncle Ibrahim (Michael Denkha), an archetypical, tightly wound coil of blue-collar migrant frustration.

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The film is often funny, with the two groups experiencing near identical trajectories, each with their own version of a bizarre meeting to acquire a firearm (David Field as a gay drug dealer with Thai menservants is a particularly strange vision).

Both groups fight among themselves, which fits with the film's message of how we're more alike than we are different. As it builds towards its final moments of absurd tragedy, though, some of Forsythe's strategies emerge as more successful than others.

Down Under works well when it's operating at its most intuitive, via simple images and actions that present interesting paradoxes. Cinematographer Lachlan Milne creates sublime slow-motion shots of the men in their cars doing burnouts, looking both elated and aggressive, and at this glacial speed, somehow moronic as well.

Elsewhere, one of the funniest scenes features Shit-stick smoking a bong on the roof of his car as Jason deliberately accelerates over a speedhump, with catastrophic results. It's one of a handful of physical gags that hilariously distils the immaturity of these young men.

Where the film is less successful is when it tries too hard to make a point. Satire trades on irony, not didacticism. Moments like when Jason's shrill, pregnant girlfriend Stacy (Harriet Dyer) demands kebabs and Turkish pizza, or when Ditch is reminded that his hero Ned Kelly was actually Irish feel slightly laboured.

The recurring theme of Christmas cheer, ironically invoked with a choral soundtrack and festive lights also becomes overstated. You start to hear the voice of a filmmaker too anxious to make sure his work is being understood.

Yet Forsyth doesn't explain himself nearly enough. What makes these Anglos want to go 'wog-bashing'? The Arab kids' reaction is perhaps more understandable, given the violence they have seen unleashed at Cronulla on their TV sets.

It would have been nice to see Forsythe and his collaborators engage more directly with the dominant culture's complicity, inadvertent or otherwise, in the riots. Passing references to grandad's old army rifle and Gallipoli only scratch the surface.

How can a film about one of the most confronting and uncomfortable episodes of recent Australian history end up seeming this risk-averse, even polite? You have to wonder if the funding body that backed it, Screen Australia, nudged the project in this direction, or whether the filmmakers themselves were wary of being too divisive.

The trouble is, compared to '70s era Barry Humphries or even the more recent TV work of Paul Fenech, Down Under feels slightly tame. It has all the flair of its best antecedents, but lacks the same appetite for ruffling feathers.