Cinema is full of characters who aren’t what they appear to be. Whether it is to drive plot (looks like a nice guy, is actually a killer) or emotional response (looks like a killer, is actually a nice guy), personality u-turns are something of a staple. This tried but trusted device steers the Last Train to Freo and drives both plot and emotion: two thugs in an empty carriage - are they killers or nice guys?

A short play became a feature film when Sims and writer Reg Cribb exercised their story’s legs to take audiences beyond the confines of stage. It is a morality tale gone bad, a literal journey in which little is what it seems. Two loud-mouthed yobs are on a train to Freemantle. When an attractive young woman boards, sexual tension rises as the pair fall over each other vying for her attention. They’re nervy, eloquent, intimidating. They channel Beckett’s Godot while toying with minor philosophical themes. Then a nervous looking man and an older woman join them, and things turn nasty.

Although The Last Train to Freo is a well managed, Sims can’t break it nor his actors from their stage roots. Not for a moment does this feel anything but a filmed, overripe version of a play with notional dressings of reality. Illogic eventually tears apart a flawed story that has descended through melodrama into didactic, preachy farce. Character u-turns on this scale require considerably more confidence and flair than Sims, Cribb or their cast of balcony-players display here.

// COLIN FRASER