Michael Bodey, The Australian on SWERVE

CRAIG Lahiff had a solid historical drama to his name and some crackling new genre scripts. But at a time when Australian filmmakers were being told to concentrate on cheaper genre pictures, the director of Black and White faced rejection with his three genre projects.
"It was hard to do genre films and get the support here, particularly for thrillers and film noir," he says. "I developed about three of them at around the same time but nobody (wanted them). Funding bodies or distributors said the Americans can do this better, so don't bother."

Lahiff laughs. Americans can also do "art films" better than most nations, so he couldn't quite see the logic of that argument.

Nor did he appreciate questions on casting. Again, the market and funding bodies look at the cast and invariably say if you don't have Hugh Jackman or someone similar headlining your Australian film, it can't compete against American films.

Yet Lahiff managed to attract two Australians now better known in the US than their homeland to star in Swerve. Jason Clarke has starred in US television series Brotherhood and The Chicago Code and worked with Michael Mann on Public Enemies, Baz Luhrmann on the coming The Great Gatsby and now Kathryn Bigelow on her coming Navy SEALs drama.

And David Lyons, a former National Institute of Dramatic Art graduate and lead of the US series The Cape, returned home to play the good Samaritan thrown into a potboiler plot of cash, drugs and sex.

"Jason said he's been sent a lot of scripts from Australia but this is the only one he wanted to do," Lahiff says. "He's certainly on the rise over there and doing really well and David Lyons gets work over there too but they're not considered stars like Hugh and Russell (Crowe)."

So, too, with their co-star Emma Booth. "Everyone wanted to be in it because it's such a great little script," she says. "I haven't read many Australian scripts actually like this. That's what draws me to anything, something I haven't done before."

With Swerve, Lahiff has manufactured a taut, pulpy thriller that serves as a fine showcase for a surprisingly long list of well-known Australian actors, including Booth, Travis McMahon, Vince Colosimo, Roy Billing and Chris Haywood -- and for Lahiff's own talents.

Indeed, some actors, most particularly Billing and Haywood, appear only in minor roles. They had worked together before and wanted to work together again.

"They just said yes and didn't worry about the money," Lahiff says, chuckling. "Their agents were horrified.

"It's fun working with people on your film you know and who are really good actors. And it helps to use some of the actors you've used before so you don't have to reinvent the wheel."

A measure of the film's worth is that it has already secured distribution in the key markets of the US and Britain. The film's Australian qualities are an asset within genre filmmaking.

Lahiff says genre films are not owned by any particular country so they can have the benefit of looking familiar in style but foreign in outlook.

"It's sort of turned out how I wanted it," he says. "I just wanted to do something light and a lot of fun that moved quite fast and had lots of twists. I think it does that."

Booth agrees. The star of Underbelly, Cloudstreet and The Boys Are Back enjoyed being part of what she describes as "a great little cast".

"And (Lahiff) came to us; we didn't audition," she says. "That was a huge compliment for us so you've always got to take notice when someone has you in mind for a character. That's always a drawing card.

"I think a lot of the budget went into paying the cast because he knew what he wanted and didn't compromise on that," she adds.

Booth plays Jina, who, while driving in the outback (the stunningly photographed Flinders Ranges), avoids a head-on collision with another driver who careens off the road.

Lyons's Colin stops to help her before finding a suitcase full of cash in the ruins of the car. Colin hands in the cash to policeman Frank (Clarke), Jina's husband, unwittingly setting in train a raft of increasingly blood-curdling and consequential events marrying small-town politics with big-city drug dealing.

Booth's Jina is typical of Lahiff's smartly written characters. In less assured hands, she would be little more than a strumpet or eye candy as the boys played with their guns and fast cars.

"There's actually no real sex scenes or much nudity and I love that fact because she's a very sexual character," she says. "She's a full femme fatale and they could have used that in obvious ways. I think that adds a lot of weight to the story and her character."

Booth says it was "full on" to play such a manipulative and focal character with the many twists and turns of the film noir-inspired action film. "It was the fast pace and the emotional intensity which was constantly heightened for what she was going through," she says. "I found that really challenging to constantly be in that state she was in, going to those places and staying in them all day. It was a lot more challenging than other roles I've played."

Lahiff says the pace of the film -- which reaches some kind of crescendo halfway through before bouncing on its way again -- was key to his thinking.

"I didn't want it to stop," he says. "I thought the plot and the set-up allowed you to do that and not give you a breather."

And he did so with car chases and action scenes, then came out the other end surprisingly conceding the low budget was adequate "and I don't think it should have been any bigger".

"It was hard to get everything done in a seven-week shoot but we had a very good grip and director of photography and used all local people," he says. "We tried to make it a real Australian film."

And a disciplined film. Lahiff belongs to the school of thought that says the shorter the film the better. Lahiff believed his first cut of 92 minutes could be trimmed. It was, and the result is 87 minutes.

"Unless it's an epic like Lawrence of Arabia, you don't need any longer to tell a story," he says.

"I always cite the case of the comedy, Dr Strangelove, which runs for 87 minutes. Why do you need any more?"