The Horseman ★★★

IT’S amazing what a committed group of film-makers can achieve.

The Horseman is an Australian revenge drama made in 2008 on a $200,000 shoestring budget by young director/writer Steven Kastrissios.

What he achieves for the amount in terms of the acting, design, make-up effects and overall intensity of the results puts many more expensive straight-to-video efforts to shame.

The film largely gambles on two things in making it stand out from a crowded pack – using only one experienced actor and throwing everything at the torture and fight sequences – and both pay off handsomely.

Peter Marshall is in almost every scene and carries the film. The intensity of his performance as Christian Fortenski is quite confronting at times and his physical and emotional presence appears to lift the amateur supporting cast which included the fight stuntmen.

Christian is a divorced 50-year-old father who works as a pest controller. We quickly learn that his adult daughter has died of a heroin overdose. But Christian receives a pornographic video tape anonymously through the post on which he finds his daughter appearing in an obviously drugged state.

He embarks on a one-man vigilante spree to confront the men who made the video as well as those on screen who assaulted her.

The torture and fight scenes in the film are confronting and brutal. Similar films made on micro-budgets can be even more violent, but are grossly let down by the acting, make-up and effects.

This does not happen here; the stuntmen are the actors and obviously relished the opportunity to combine the disciplines. A film for strong stomachs and viewers prepared to look past the obvious limitations in budget, but certainly not conviction or talent.