听 Adapted from Bill O'Brien's book Aramoana: 22 Hours of Terror, writer-director Robert Sarkies's gripping docudrama Out Of The Blue revisits the worst gun massacre in New Zealand history. On 13 November 1990 middle-aged loner David Gray went on the rampage with an automatic weapon, killing 13 people in a seaside village near Dunedin. Scrupulously avoiding sensationalism, the film concentrates much less on the killer, than on the other locals engulfed in the tragedy.
The opening scenes of Out Of The Blue establish the sleepy nature of the community in Aramoana. On this sunny day people take an early-morning stroll with their dogs on the idyllic beach, children prepare to catch the bus to school and everyone seems to know each other's name. Which is what makes the sudden eruption of violence - Gray (Matthew Sunderland) firing at his neighbour Garry (Simon Ferry) after a brief argument - so shocking.
"DISTORTED SOUND AND OUT-OF-FOCUS SHOTS"
The local police, used to dealing with burglaries and sheep-thefts, are utterly unprepared for the bloodshed that follows. They rush to the scene, but they're not crack-shots equipped with the latest surveillance technology: their radios don't work properly and NIck (Karl Urban) misses an opportunity to take down the killer. Yet amidst the panic and fear, there are some heroic actions: 72-year-old Helen Dickson (non-professional Lois Lawn), for example, despite recently having had hip surgery, crawls several times along a ditch to assist a wounded man. ("There's a johnny out here shooting people", is her stoical telephone explanation to the emergency services.) Meanwhile Gray himself remains an almost mute presence throughout the film, with Sarkies using distorted sound effects and out-of-focus shots to convey his disturbed state of mind.
Out Of The Blue is out in the UK on 14th March 2008.
An antidote to glossy violence we so often see these days.
