The ex Tweets...

"Patrick hughes' Red Hill aussie western starring true blood's ryan kwanten is quite good. A lean mean unpretentious b-movie."

I only need six characters to say: "Agreed."

A well-executed genre piece like "Red Hill" is the exact movie equivalent of a blues song, working changes on the conventions of a rigidly constrained form.

The relevant Warshow quote describes the Western as "an art form for connoisseurs, where the spectator derives his pleasure from the appreciation of minor variations within the working out of an established order."

Subtlety is not a priority. The Ryan Kwanten character here is named "Shane Cooper," to forestall any doubt about what he (somewhat ironically) represents.

Shane'e nemesis, a hideously burn-scarred aboriginal behemoth, resembles both the implacable avenging redskin in "The Stalking Moon" (one of the last Hollywood Westerns in which an Indian represented uninflected evil) and megalithic slasher Golems such as Michael Myers.

Note, however, that he is also equipped with a billowing duster overcoat and a twangy, Morricone-esque guitar theme, which are hero markers. No Brownie points for anticipating the Politically Correct third act plot reversal.