Rated: MA15+ 
Directed by: David Field
Written by: George Basha
Produced by: George Basha, David Field, John Tedesco
Starring: George Basha, Abbey Aziz, Johnny Nasser, Tony Ryan, Rahel Romahn, Taylor Weise, Adre de Vanny.
After seeing the trailer for, The Combination Redemption, I walked in dubious but hoping from some good Aussie crime.
I was right to be dubious with the contrived romance between returning character John Morkos (George Basha) and therapist, love interest, Amira (Abbey Aziz). You know those painful, forced love-in’s that have no chemistry but are forced anyway? Yeah, ouch.
John meets Amira because she’s originally his therapist – not that a Bachelor in Psychology would qualify these days… After his younger brother’s murder (in the 2009 acclaimed original, The Combination), John needs more than his passion for boxing to get him through his grief.
Thankfully, the romance between Christian boxing trainer and Muslim psychologist does evolve and become less painful with a bit of humour from Amira’s brothers.
What I did appreciate was the piecing together of scenes (editor: Shelley O’Neil) and clever camera work (director of photography: Robert Morton) of graffiti tagged water-ways and tunnels. And the fight scenes were realistic with blood oozing from head-wounds.
It’s pretty confronting stuff.
The film explores racist violence – featuring shorn-off shotguns – enticed by politicians, the rhetoric sounding familiar with the debate of immigration still raging in Australia. Here, the violence is taken too far by drug-fuelled anger from members of a white supremacist group who believe in a white Australia, saying things like the Indigenous population and original land owners, must have taken the country from the white’s somewhere in the distant past.
There’re drug dealers trying to recover stolen money from runners who’ve had enough of making the boss money with nothing of their own, adding more of that crime element to the story – this is where the film really comes alive.
The soundtrack added another layer to the story, a memorable moment a thunderstorm booming during the boxing scene of John fighting for his life against real-life boxing star, George Kambosos Jnr.
And the percussion and drums are like a rapid heart-beat punctuating the violence and drama of living in a multi-cultural city that struggles to accept differences in religious belief.
There’s a lot going on here: racism, drugs, religion, love, family, grief… I would have preferred less drama, sticking with the boxing and crime. Perhaps even a TV mini-series to round-out all the complexities.
Cringe-worthy moments aside, there’s plenty of twists and turns while capturing the underbelly of life in Western Sydney. I just wish the film stuck with the fisty cuffs.