Unfortunately, Weir's deftness with 'atmosphere' seems to have been developing at the expense of any narrative or thematic sense.

Weir's touristy vision is strictly from the outside looking in.

Peter Weir's follow-up to his breakout film is a meandering rumination on the clash of Australian colonial and Aboriginal cultures -- equal parts thriller, white guilt parable and murky mysticism.

The Last Wave is bold and wonderful strange. It comes packed with rain-soaked foreboding and a then-progressive, muscular attitude to indigineity in 1970s Australia.