Available this Tuesday from Subversive Cinema is this set of films from Australia. For collectors, the price will be right considering that what is included are not only one feature film and one mini-series, but quite a lot of bonus material like commentary tracks and a soundtrack CD.

Geoffrey Wright is one of those filmmakers who has struggled to create a career in spite of the international splash he made with his debut feature, Romper Stomper, released in 1992. Wright’s follow-up, Metal Skin, released in 1994, is an even more nihilistic story with fast cars and black magic. What the film is really about is being young, in Melbourne, and having a limited future working as a stocker at a grocery store, or perhaps an auto mechanic if one is lucky. The best known cast member may be Tara Morice, the female lead from Strictly Ballroom. Other cast members include Aden Young, Ben Mendelsohn, and Nadine Garner.

What helps put Metal Skin in perspective is that included with this DVD is Geoffrey Wright’s first directorial effort, the almost hour-long Lover Boy, from 1988. The story of a high school boy who has an affair with a much older woman, the film stars Noah Taylor with Ben Mendelsohn in a supporting role. From the start, Wright has had interest in dramatizing the rage of young people who find little comfort in the working class suburbs that their parents call home, but also find themselves unable to find any viable alternative ways to live. Wright has had to go through several years between films. Subversive Cinema has an interview with Wright on their website. Seven years after his American debut, Cherry Falls, Wright has filmed is interpretation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

One of the stars of Wright’s Macbeth is Steve Bastoni, the star of Blue Murder, the mini-series that is part of this DVD set. The title is something of a dark-humored pun as the true-ish story about a cop who was both the most decorated for his arrest record, and the most corrupt. Richard Roxburgh portrays the dazzling and dirty detective Roger Rogerson, while Bastoni is Drury, the undercover cop who refuses to allow Rogerson to get away with murder. The series takes a little while to get started, setting up the narrative arc, before becoming involving once Drury hits the scene. While the action sequences are well done, what makes Blue Murder interesting is having scenes of the characters’ family life, a reminder that even cops and drug dealers have wives and kids. While some of the ads have compared this 1995 min series to The Shield, for me, a more apt comparison might be some of Sidney Lumet’s movies about corrupt cops such as Q & A and Prince of the City.

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