Low budget, high class

The Jammed (MA) 4 stars Limited release The Invasion (M) 2½ stars National release

The Jammed (MA) 4 stars Limited release The Invasion (M) 2½ stars National release

THE Jammed is a low-budget Australian thriller in the best tradition of film noir. In fact, it belongs in the sub-category of noir, such as Edward Dmytryk's Crossfire (1947), that works on two levels: as a suspense film and as an expose of a social evil.

In the case of Dmytryk, who would wind up in prison as one of the Hollywood 10 under the baleful influence of McCarthyism, the evil he was exposing was that of anti-Semitism. In the case of The Jammed, writer-director Dee McLachlan wants to expose the infamous trafficking in sex slaves which, she shows, is endemic in Australia.

This will be no surprise to social workers, police and anyone in direct contact with this suffering, but the facts McLachlan unearthed when she researched her film (after reading about the subject in a newspaper) are genuinely shocking.

An estimated 1000 women are brought into Australia each year, and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has listed Australia as the 10th top destination for victims of human trafficking. Court transcripts substantiate the events depicted in McLachlan's screenplay.

It could have been made as a documentary. Instead, in the best tradition of the social thriller, McLachlan has turned it into a powerful drama in which the facts are unearthed by a young office worker called Ashley Hudson, impressively played by talented newcomer Veronica Sywak.

Ashley has just broken up with her boyfriend and gone on a blind date to meet an eligible man arriving from China at the airport. The guy is not at all what Ashley is looking for, but on the flight he has befriended Sunee (Amanda Ma), who is looking for her missing daughter. She knows no one in Melbourne and desperately needs someone to help her. Reluctantly, Ashley agrees, and the search for the missing Rubi (Sun Park) proves to be a dangerous one.

Intercut with these scenes are sequences which show Crystal (Emma Lung) being interrogated by authorities. She tells them how she was brought to Australia to work as a dancer but, on arrival, was raped and imprisoned until, alone, violated and terrified, she agreed to work in a brothel to pay back the money she was supposed to owe the men who brought her here.

Crystal, Rubi and a Russian girl, Vanya (Saskia Burmeister), share the same fate and the same miserable existence.

McLachlan doesn't overstress the horrors these young women face: she doesn't need to. But in opening this particular can of worms, she has made a powerful plea on behalf of these sex slaves. One of the most telling points she makes is that after all the violence and humiliation these women have endured, the Australian authorities will, if the girls are discovered, treat them almost as harshly as their jailers and they'll wind up in detention centres before being deported.

Despite its small budget, The Jammed is beautifully made. The writing and direction are intelligent, the on-the-run shooting on Melbourne streets is exemplary and the performances from every cast member are memorable.

McLachlan was unable to attract financial support from a government body to make the film (Film Victoria contributed post-production money), which is a sad comment on the state of our cinema. She also found initial difficulty in getting distribution.

But, at last, The Jammed (which, unfortunately, appears to have missed out on competing in this year's AFI awards) is getting the exposure it deserves. It demonstrates with crystal clarity that you don't need huge budgets to make impressive, important films: this is the best Australian film of the year so far.

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JACK Finney's book, The Body Snatchers, has been filmed four times, but the remakes have never matched the original. Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) was a superior B movie that turned Finney's story -- about mysterious pods floating in from outer space that somehow take people over and rob them of their emotions (no love, no hate) -- into a McCarthy-era allegory.

Talk around Hollywood is that a new screenplay by David Kajganich, based on the book, was sufficiently intelligent and cerebral to attract Oliver Hirschbiegel, director of the well-regarded German film about Hitler, Downfall. He chose The Invasion to make his Hollywood debut.

The leading characters underwent sex changes: Dr Miles Bennell, played by Kevin McCarthy in the original, became Dr Carol Bennell, played by Nicole Kidman, and the girl he loves, Becky Driscoll, Dana Wynter in the original, is now Ben Driscoll, played by Daniel Craig.

The setting is no longer a small Californian town but Washington, DC, and the Cold War allusions have been replaced by references to Iraq, Iran, Darfur and North Korea.

The invasion this time takes place as the result of the crash of a space shuttle, which spreads apparently toxic debris over a wide area. As people begin to change, the world undergoes a period of peace: no love, no hate, no emotion. This irony (humans fighting against peace, in a sense) was presumably at least part of the attraction for Hirschbiegel.

Unfortunately, the film's producer, Joel Silver, seems to have felt that the director's cut was too cerebral, too psychological. He hired Larry and Andy Wachowski to sex it up a bit and, with the help of V for Vendetta director James McTeigue, we now have the requisite number of car chases (including a ludicrous sequence in which Kidman drives a blazing car through a parking station) and shootings. Worst of all, we have an ending that completely compromises the original. I wonder who was to blame for that?

Kidman does the best she can under the circumstances, giving a gutsy performance in which she spends most of her time trying to stay awake (to sleep is to be taken over) and to protect her young son, who is mysteriously immune from the virus. The rest of the cast, including Craig, seem uninvolved in it all.