After considerable success, Project Greenlight America was exported to Australia. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck champion aspiring filmmakers then hand over a considerable sum to fund their dream. Here, Morgan O’Neill beat off around 1200 scripts, ‘won’ a million dollars in funding and saw his project go green. One can only wonder about the competition. Compared with the inspired and groundbreaking work of, say, Ten Canoes, Solo arrives like a breath of stale air. O’Neill’s foray into Sydney’s criminal underbelly taps a rich vein of stereotype and cliché that populated many an episode of TV’s Water Rats. His crime-based thriller was born after seeing "shady types wandering in and out of the back lanes” of Darlinghurst. That may be true, but it remains a poor reflection of reality.

Solo finds an aging hit-man one job from retirement. He negotiates crooks, crooked crims and crooked cops to break free of his obligations, but it’s not easy work. His freedom comes at a price as his hooker girlfriend (naturally, beyond redemption) reminds him. So far, so terribly familiar. Solo fails to ring true on nearly every level, helped by O’Neill’s efforts to sex up the city with a jazz score and action-hero quips. He drops a layer of grimy glitz across Kings Cross, gives the police cocaine, and the gangsters guns. Yet what may work in Hollywood feels contrived, leaden, derivative and largely nonsensical in an Australian context. Even Friels at his hammy, world-weary best gives us little to enjoy. Solo looks every bit the cheap, serviceable, made-for-TV hero-fantasy that it is.

// COLIN FRASER