Two Hands
Two Hands (from Weird and Wonderful II: Fifty More Cult Films by George Hughes, available from freefall-productions.com on 02/11/20)
1999 / Australia / 103 minutes
“If you’re going through some sort of shit in your life, chances are someone else has been through the same thing before you- and they’ve written it down. Some poet or philosopher has been through the same type of crap- and they’ve written about it. And when you find that poem or that piece of writing, and you think “Bloody hell! This bastard’s just summed it all up!” it’s kind of comforting, know what I mean?”
Director: Gregor Jordan / Screenplay: Gregor Jordan / Director of Photography: Malcolm McCulloch / Music: Cezary Skubiszewski / Production: Marian MacGowan for Meridian Films / Cast: Heath Ledger (Jimmy), Bryan Brown (Pando), David Field (Acko), Tom Long (Wally), Tony Forrow (Eddie), Steve Vidler (“The Man” / Michael), Rose Byrne (Alex), Dale Kalnins (Kiwi Bob), Kiri Paramore (Les), Mariel McClorey (Helen), Matthew Wilkinson (Rocket), Steve Le Marquand (Wozza), Kieran Darcy-Smith (Craig), Susie Porter (Deirdre).
I remember hearing the news of Heath Ledger’s death in January 2008 very clearly. The Australian actor had died from an accidental overdose of mixed prescription medications. Having just had a disastrous relationship breakdown, I was pretty heavily on the piss (and whatever else I could get my hands on) at the time and could have easily gone out in similar fashion.
In a way, I think that hearing about Ledger may have been one of the things that prevented that. He’d died far too young at 28 but had more than made his mark, going from unknown newcomer to massive star in under a decade. I’ve now lived a decade longer than Ledger did and am still struggling to get my work seen by anyone. But back in 2008, reading about everything he’d achieved during the short time that he was alive, I made the decision to get back to work, keep going and keep trying.
Later the same year we saw one of his last performances (and now probably his most famous) as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Walking out of the cinema with my brother, I remember us both mentioning how much Ledger’s Joker looked like Brandon Lee in The Crow. Like Ledger, Lee had died young with his last role becoming his most celebrated and well known.
The similarities don’t end there either. In 1998, when he was just nineteen, Ledger had filmed one of his first lead roles in a film with a karmic message and spirit very similar to The Crow’s. But unlike Alex Proyas’s relentlessly dark gothic fairytale, Gregor Jordan’s underappreciated Australian crime comedy Two Hands did it all in the bright sunlight of real world Sydney- and with a sense of humour.
Two Hands begins with Ledger’s character Jimmy, a young strip club doorman, winning an underground bare-knuckle boxing match against an older, bigger opponent and catching the attention of local crime boss Pando (Bryan Brown), who immediately offers him work. Jimmy’s first job is to deliver an envelope containing $10,000 in cash to a woman in Bondi Beach who happens to die in her flat moments before Jimmy arrives.
Getting no answer at her door, Jimmy decides to hang around for a while in case she turns up and buries the envelope beneath the sand on the beach while he goes for a swim. While he’s in the water, the cash is nicked by two street kids who saw him hide it. Ever the naïve nice guy, Jimmy calls Pando to apologise for losing the money and ends up with the whole crew of gangsters after him.
From there, Two Hands becomes at once a farcical comedy of errors and a profoundly poetic story of natural justice. Jimmy starts to question his extremely limited existence of boozing and boxing with the same local mates (who all look up to Pando) after meeting Alex (Rose Byrne), a country girl visiting from “Up north”.
Still trying to do the right thing in the world he knows, Jimmy joins his mate Wozza’s (Steve Le Marquand, in one of the film’s funniest roles) gang of bank robbers to raise the cash to pay Pando back, whilst also still going out to meet Alex with the city’s whole underworld looking for him.
Jimmy’s workmate Les (Kiri Paramore), already jealous of Jimmy for getting a job with Pando and a date with Alex, helps the gang track him down (but does get a deserved battering himself from a street musician he’s robbed and assaulted in the process). About to be executed by Pando and his henchmen, Jimmy learns that they were responsible for killing his older brother, Michael (who also worked for them years earlier) before escaping, with the help of Michael’s ghost (Steve Vidler).
Part of the great run of ’90’s and early ’00’s Aussie crime films that also included Geoffrey Wright’s Romper Stomper (1992), Andrew Dominick’s Chopper (2000) and Ray Lawrence’s Lantana (2001), Two Hands adds a completely unexpected supernatural angle with the inclusion of Michael’s ghost. Although the character’s identity is never explicitly stated (Vidler is credited as “The Man”) and the degree to which he influences events is open to interpretation, the ghost’s presence does explain the way everything in the film happens for a reason and most of the characters end up getting exactly what they deserve.
Jimmy is a decent person in a bad environment, an honest man trapped in a world where someone like Pando is seen by everyone as a “Good bloke”. Jimmy himself even keeps referring to Pando this way even when he’s on the run from him and, despite Alex already questioning his lifestyle, it’s probably not until he finds out what happened to Michael that he alters this rote learnt opinion.
However, Pando is shown to be a nice family man away from his work in the scenes with him at home with his wife and son. And the car thief who (unlike Jimmy, intentionally) rips off one of the other villains also gets what he deserves when the gang catches up with him. It’s also never personal for these gangsters (even calling them gangsters doesn’t feel right- there are no sharp suits involved, just the standard Aussie bloke uniform of vest and tracksuit trousers all round) as Pando explains with the story about the one time he let someone off.
Even in the end, after having tried to kill Jimmy and told him what happened to Michael, the gang still offer him more work like nothing’s happened because it’s all just been a friendly punch- up and a bit of a laugh between mates! While this is all presented in an obviously very Australian way, the same unwritten rules of local underworlds where everybody knows everybody else apply equally on British council estates and American housing projects.
But Two Hands is one of the rare crime films where the protagonist not only questions the world they know but ultimately makes the decision to get away from it. For so many people (young men in urban environments, especially) a life of petty criminality is the best they’re taught to hope for and the thought of any way out is the stuff of ridiculous fantasy.
How many times have you seen a film about a doomed character who could have survived by just leaving it all behind and going to live somewhere else? How many real people are trapped in exactly these situations in cities all over the world? There are several brilliant and devastating examples of this in The Wire (2002 - 2008), best summed up by the late Robert F. Chew’s character Proposition Joe when he asks why so many Baltimore gang members think “Going on the run” just means crossing over to the other side of town for a while.
Different cuts of Two Hands do alter the amount of supernatural intervention at play in the narrative as the ghost’s role is reduced in the theatrical release. In the longest version (on the Region 2 DVD but in 4:3 because it’s from an Australian TV broadcast) he’s seen being dragged underground by the dead at the end (like Eric Draven in The Crow, his time back on Earth to put things right is limited).
With his brother’s help, Jimmy has avoided becoming what his circumstances were going to force to become and made something of himself instead. A final karmic point is made as he leaves and Helen (Mariel McClorey), one of the kids who stole the envelope, shoots the men he spared. Taking the cash has led to her becoming a killer while losing it has saved Jimmy from the same path. It’s unlikely Jimmy recognises Helen as they pass in the hallway but he does recognise something in her- perhaps what she’s about to do and that she’s taken his place.
But the ghost’s Blake quote about there being nothing worse than wasted lives and wasted potential is the film’s final message, now made even more poignant knowing that it’s star would only live ten more years. When Crowded House’s brilliantly uplifting Kare Kare kicks in for the end credits (the soundtrack’s all ’90’s Aussie rock), the nineteen year old Ledger is forever preserved in his youth, laughing at Alex’s “Bananas” joke. As brief as his time may have been, he used it.
1999 / Australia / 103 minutes
“If you’re going through some sort of shit in your life, chances are someone else has been through the same thing before you- and they’ve written it down. Some poet or philosopher has been through the same type of crap- and they’ve written about it. And when you find that poem or that piece of writing, and you think “Bloody hell! This bastard’s just summed it all up!” it’s kind of comforting, know what I mean?”
Director: Gregor Jordan / Screenplay: Gregor Jordan / Director of Photography: Malcolm McCulloch / Music: Cezary Skubiszewski / Production: Marian MacGowan for Meridian Films / Cast: Heath Ledger (Jimmy), Bryan Brown (Pando), David Field (Acko), Tom Long (Wally), Tony Forrow (Eddie), Steve Vidler (“The Man” / Michael), Rose Byrne (Alex), Dale Kalnins (Kiwi Bob), Kiri Paramore (Les), Mariel McClorey (Helen), Matthew Wilkinson (Rocket), Steve Le Marquand (Wozza), Kieran Darcy-Smith (Craig), Susie Porter (Deirdre).
I remember hearing the news of Heath Ledger’s death in January 2008 very clearly. The Australian actor had died from an accidental overdose of mixed prescription medications. Having just had a disastrous relationship breakdown, I was pretty heavily on the piss (and whatever else I could get my hands on) at the time and could have easily gone out in similar fashion.
In a way, I think that hearing about Ledger may have been one of the things that prevented that. He’d died far too young at 28 but had more than made his mark, going from unknown newcomer to massive star in under a decade. I’ve now lived a decade longer than Ledger did and am still struggling to get my work seen by anyone. But back in 2008, reading about everything he’d achieved during the short time that he was alive, I made the decision to get back to work, keep going and keep trying.
Later the same year we saw one of his last performances (and now probably his most famous) as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Walking out of the cinema with my brother, I remember us both mentioning how much Ledger’s Joker looked like Brandon Lee in The Crow. Like Ledger, Lee had died young with his last role becoming his most celebrated and well known.
The similarities don’t end there either. In 1998, when he was just nineteen, Ledger had filmed one of his first lead roles in a film with a karmic message and spirit very similar to The Crow’s. But unlike Alex Proyas’s relentlessly dark gothic fairytale, Gregor Jordan’s underappreciated Australian crime comedy Two Hands did it all in the bright sunlight of real world Sydney- and with a sense of humour.
Two Hands begins with Ledger’s character Jimmy, a young strip club doorman, winning an underground bare-knuckle boxing match against an older, bigger opponent and catching the attention of local crime boss Pando (Bryan Brown), who immediately offers him work. Jimmy’s first job is to deliver an envelope containing $10,000 in cash to a woman in Bondi Beach who happens to die in her flat moments before Jimmy arrives.
Getting no answer at her door, Jimmy decides to hang around for a while in case she turns up and buries the envelope beneath the sand on the beach while he goes for a swim. While he’s in the water, the cash is nicked by two street kids who saw him hide it. Ever the naïve nice guy, Jimmy calls Pando to apologise for losing the money and ends up with the whole crew of gangsters after him.
From there, Two Hands becomes at once a farcical comedy of errors and a profoundly poetic story of natural justice. Jimmy starts to question his extremely limited existence of boozing and boxing with the same local mates (who all look up to Pando) after meeting Alex (Rose Byrne), a country girl visiting from “Up north”.
Still trying to do the right thing in the world he knows, Jimmy joins his mate Wozza’s (Steve Le Marquand, in one of the film’s funniest roles) gang of bank robbers to raise the cash to pay Pando back, whilst also still going out to meet Alex with the city’s whole underworld looking for him.
Jimmy’s workmate Les (Kiri Paramore), already jealous of Jimmy for getting a job with Pando and a date with Alex, helps the gang track him down (but does get a deserved battering himself from a street musician he’s robbed and assaulted in the process). About to be executed by Pando and his henchmen, Jimmy learns that they were responsible for killing his older brother, Michael (who also worked for them years earlier) before escaping, with the help of Michael’s ghost (Steve Vidler).
Part of the great run of ’90’s and early ’00’s Aussie crime films that also included Geoffrey Wright’s Romper Stomper (1992), Andrew Dominick’s Chopper (2000) and Ray Lawrence’s Lantana (2001), Two Hands adds a completely unexpected supernatural angle with the inclusion of Michael’s ghost. Although the character’s identity is never explicitly stated (Vidler is credited as “The Man”) and the degree to which he influences events is open to interpretation, the ghost’s presence does explain the way everything in the film happens for a reason and most of the characters end up getting exactly what they deserve.
Jimmy is a decent person in a bad environment, an honest man trapped in a world where someone like Pando is seen by everyone as a “Good bloke”. Jimmy himself even keeps referring to Pando this way even when he’s on the run from him and, despite Alex already questioning his lifestyle, it’s probably not until he finds out what happened to Michael that he alters this rote learnt opinion.
However, Pando is shown to be a nice family man away from his work in the scenes with him at home with his wife and son. And the car thief who (unlike Jimmy, intentionally) rips off one of the other villains also gets what he deserves when the gang catches up with him. It’s also never personal for these gangsters (even calling them gangsters doesn’t feel right- there are no sharp suits involved, just the standard Aussie bloke uniform of vest and tracksuit trousers all round) as Pando explains with the story about the one time he let someone off.
Even in the end, after having tried to kill Jimmy and told him what happened to Michael, the gang still offer him more work like nothing’s happened because it’s all just been a friendly punch- up and a bit of a laugh between mates! While this is all presented in an obviously very Australian way, the same unwritten rules of local underworlds where everybody knows everybody else apply equally on British council estates and American housing projects.
But Two Hands is one of the rare crime films where the protagonist not only questions the world they know but ultimately makes the decision to get away from it. For so many people (young men in urban environments, especially) a life of petty criminality is the best they’re taught to hope for and the thought of any way out is the stuff of ridiculous fantasy.
How many times have you seen a film about a doomed character who could have survived by just leaving it all behind and going to live somewhere else? How many real people are trapped in exactly these situations in cities all over the world? There are several brilliant and devastating examples of this in The Wire (2002 - 2008), best summed up by the late Robert F. Chew’s character Proposition Joe when he asks why so many Baltimore gang members think “Going on the run” just means crossing over to the other side of town for a while.
Different cuts of Two Hands do alter the amount of supernatural intervention at play in the narrative as the ghost’s role is reduced in the theatrical release. In the longest version (on the Region 2 DVD but in 4:3 because it’s from an Australian TV broadcast) he’s seen being dragged underground by the dead at the end (like Eric Draven in The Crow, his time back on Earth to put things right is limited).
With his brother’s help, Jimmy has avoided becoming what his circumstances were going to force to become and made something of himself instead. A final karmic point is made as he leaves and Helen (Mariel McClorey), one of the kids who stole the envelope, shoots the men he spared. Taking the cash has led to her becoming a killer while losing it has saved Jimmy from the same path. It’s unlikely Jimmy recognises Helen as they pass in the hallway but he does recognise something in her- perhaps what she’s about to do and that she’s taken his place.
But the ghost’s Blake quote about there being nothing worse than wasted lives and wasted potential is the film’s final message, now made even more poignant knowing that it’s star would only live ten more years. When Crowded House’s brilliantly uplifting Kare Kare kicks in for the end credits (the soundtrack’s all ’90’s Aussie rock), the nineteen year old Ledger is forever preserved in his youth, laughing at Alex’s “Bananas” joke. As brief as his time may have been, he used it.
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