Created by Nathan Hill
“I like your face. It’s just your personality that shits me.”
The 2019 Australian drama Colourblind was written, directed and produced by Nathan Hill, who also starred as JAFFY ROTUNDA, a middle-aged, colourblind investigator from Melbourne, Australia, who just broke up with his girlfriend. At odds, he begrudgingly comes out of retirement for “one last job,” as a favour for his old boss, a sort of broker for private detectives.
That “last job” is to shadow a young girl, Sia Baxter, whom her sister, Trix, fears is suicidal.Â
Sadly, the film is not very good. The story is unconvincing and just sort of fades away, the dialogue is tone deaf (but plentiful), the direction unimaginative and uninteresting, and Jaffy’s character is only vaguely sketched out. We’re told he retired “for a very good reason,” but never really find out the exact circumstances (something about a a former client of Jaffy’s killing himself), although it’s apparently serious enough that he’s now visits a therapist regularly. We’re also told that Jaffy’s an ace investigator, a dedicated professional, but you can’t tell from this film. He’s soon revealed as something of a dud, lousy at tailing Sia (could his rented camera be any larger or more ridiculous?)–not that it matters. His cover is soon blown because–get this–he’s fallen in love with Sia.
And this is revealed in the cheesiest, most corny way possible. Seems when colourblind Jaffy first sees this Sia for the first time, she appears in colour (and of course the film moves from gray scale (film gris?) to full colour, just to clue us in).
Even more perplexing is that Sia, a young, drop-dead gorgeous model falls for the doughy, piggy-eyed investigator twenty years her senior, who walks like he just pooped his pants. (And boy, do we get a lot of scenes where Jaffy is just… walking).
Things get a bit more complicated–but not necessarily more compelling–when Jaffy discovers that a former rival, Mr. X (yes, MR. X!), is also following Sia, apparently hired by her mother, Mrs. Baxter, an aging sexpot. By the time that Jaffy gets the crap beaten out of him, I wasn’t sure if it was part of the plot, or a wandering film critic had decided to do a hands-on review.
Thing is, sometimes it’s hard to know who to blame when a film with potentially good ideas goes terribly astray. Do you blame the writer? The director? The producer? The actor?
Fortunately, with Colourblind, it’d easy to know who to blame.
FILMS
- COLORBLINDÂ |Â Watch it now!
(2019, NH Productions)
Written by Nathan Hill
Directed by Nathan Hill
Produced by Nathan Hill and Michael Siu
Starring Nathan Hill as JAFFY ROTUNDA
With Anne Gauthier as Sia
Also starring Jane Badler, Nick Wightman, Anica Brown, Ian Rooney, Mardi Edge, Jake Ryan, David Macrae, Marty Rhone, Frederique Fouche, Leslie Lawrence and Thomas Morris
