The Australian film historian Brian McFarlane coined the term "wallaby western" to describe Down Under action movies influenced by the American frontier genre. One of the finest examples is Fred Schepisi's 1978 version of the Thomas Keneally novel The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, starring Tommy Lewis as an early 20th century aboriginal lad divorced from his culture, humiliated, driven to murder and hunted across the outback. Now more than 30 years later and styling himself Tom E Lewis, its leading actor is back in an Australian revenge movie modelled on High Noon, featuring some magnificent scenery and both horses and cars – but no wallabies.

A young new police constable receives a dusty welcome when he arrives in the eponymous dying township of Red Hill the very day a notorious aboriginal murderer, Jimmy Conway (Lewis), escapes from jail to seek vengeance on the police chief and other locals who helped put him away. He's an ace gunslinger, a brilliant tracker, a remorseless force of nature with a face disfigured by fire, and over the next 15 hours or so he fights a running battle with a local posse. But is he a brutal psychopath like the killer in the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men, or the victim of injustice like the avenger in High Plains Drifter? The movie is extremely well staged and the young hero's dramatic lineage is established by his resonant name – Shane Cooper.