2013, Ivan Sen (Limbo) -- Amazon
<ten minutes of Googling>
Nope, the movie is the first thing. Let's watch that first.
This is Australian crime drama, in the cowboy vein (often called neo-western, but I prefer "cowboy noir"), focused on the rural interactions between indigenous and white folks, which despite all our "progressive" attitudes and claims, is still always a shit situation.
On a desolate, remote, rural highway, the body of a young girl is found by a trucker. Detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen, The Gloaming) is called in, having recently returned "home" from "the city", where he gained some acclaim, but also some trouble. He hasn't been back in a while, leaving behind an alcoholic ex-wife and a teenage daughter and the ever pervasive poverty & addiction.
Its a slow burn investigation, following little clues that lead from one thing to another, instigating it into his past and his life and the relationships between the locals, aboriginal and not. Nothing is really clear here, there is no big villain, girls aren't being killed by a serial killer with strange ritualistic tendencies. It all is just a culmination of addiction and prostitution and illegal drugs and corruption. Its grim, fucking grim, but not in the other worldly way you see in other movies like this; it's almost too mundane, so much so, it's depressing.
I won't relate the plot points, how clues lead to clues lead to details, as I honestly couldn't follow most of it, and I think that was intentional. Jay isn't a brilliant detective putting together details from tenuous threads, but just someone who knows the environment and is willing to do something about it.
It all ends in a violent interaction, like something from a grim 90s indie-thriller, guns being fired at each other, and only Jay left standing. Has he brought anyone to justice? No. Has he ended the drug trade and prostitution in his home town? No. But he has ended something.
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