Anyone who thinks Robert Pattinson's acting stops at making swoony vampire eyes is selling the star short -- by a considerable margin.
While Pattinson's performances in "Water for Elephants" and "Remember Me" were solid, both leaned too heavily on his "Twilight" cred, casually capitalizing on his weepy romantic image. However, it was last year's "Cosmopolis," an adaptation of the Don DeLillo novel of the same name by Canadian director David Cronenberg, that pushed Pattinson over the edge from potentially great to genuinely wonderful.
It looks like that streak will continue with "The Rover," a post-apocalyptic western from "Animal Kingdom" director David Michod, which has just secured American distribution from A24 ("Spring Breakers," "The Bling Ring").
The film co-stars Guy Pearce, Scott McNairy, David Field, Anthony Hayes, and Gillian Jones, and the story (co-written by Michod confederate Joel Edgerton) is described by Variety as "set in a world where life is cheap a decade after the collapse of the western economic system." While traveling in the Australian outback, Pearce's loner character gets robbed by a gang of thieves, who leave behind a wounded member, played by Pattinson. Left with no choice, Pattinson reluctantly helps Pearce track down his cronies.
While there's no release date yet, two minutes of tantalizing footage was screened at Cannes this year for potential foreign buyers, with rights being subsequently snapped up the world over. A24 has had particular luck with this kind of offbeat material, prime examples being "Bling Ring" and "Spring Breakers."
We cannot wait to see what Pearce and Pattinson are up to in the violent, post-apocalyptic outback, but it's safe to say it's probably a whole lot of no good.
[via Variety]
