A medium close-up of Richard Davis (Matt Whelan), the (semi-fictional) director of Radio Hauraki. He’s in a cabin on the Tiri, Hauraki's first home, lying in a hammock, staring straight down the barrel of the camera. “Hear that?” he asks us – he asks us. We’re on him for a couple of seconds, maybe less.
Cut to a long shot, outside the cabin, looking in. It’s a dutch angle, from above, giving us a good view of the rough accommodation. Davis turns to meet it – kind of – and answers the question for us. “That’s the sound of freedom.” Smash cut to someone vomiting into a bucket upstairs.
Photo: 3 Mile
It’s a bit of a cheesy line, even for 3 Mile Limit, but the moment isn’t – it’salive. The editing is sharp and the shots are short, keeping the audience moving; the direct address discards the rules of conventional true-story filmmaking for something more knowing, something more 24 Hour Party People; shot placement and editing work in real harmony, pulling us from the quiet of the Tiri to the place where Hauraki’s action happens in a few short seconds. It’s energetic, it’s funny, it’s channelling the freewheeling, fuck-the-rules spirit that the film breathlessly champions. It’s everything the film should be.
It’s also an hour in, and it feels like it’s dropped in from somewhere else.
Thanks to a poorly-judged press release on March 10, 3 Mile Limit has been getting the wrong kind of post-release press. Complaining about local reviewers “refrain[ing] from publishing any of the positive aspects or events about the film (accolades etc)”, the film’s producers made the mistake of shifting the spotlight off them and onto New Zealand film reviewers - and if anything’s true about a critic, it’s that we love to talk about ourselves.
That’s not to say that the points that the open letter raised aren't worth addressing. As Liam Maguren at Flicks.co.nz points out, reviewers should be called out for critiques that are founded in false recollections of the film or any true story behind a film. It should also go without saying that reviewers have no obligation to give boosts to filmmakers who make films the reviewers don’t like, even if the filmmakers are New Zealanders – the fastest way for a reviewer to torpedo their credibility is to start giving points to filmmakers for just showing up.
But let’s talk about 3 Mile Limit, the film that “didn’t feel the support” of New Zealand reviewers. Let’s put aside the accolades, the music rights and Matt Whelan’s career prospects and talk about the film. Because the film itself is a pretty weak attempt at turning the origins of Radio Hauraki into a reverent and respectable true-life drama – the last thing this story should be.
Occasional flourishes are sandwiched between scene after scene of static shots, sluggish editing and unimaginative framing
It’s here that I go back to the short scene I talked about at the top of this. 3 Mile Limit doesn’t entirely neglect that scene’s visual language, capturing it in occasional flourishes – a jerky late-80s music video zoom on Morrie pulling the V sign; a dolly shot that catches a red-lit corridor as it follows Judy, Davis’ wife, through Hauraki’s office foyer; the cheesy non-diegetic warp of a diegetic rock track when Davis tells a band to be at the Tiri at 7am. But they’re sandwiched between scene after scene of static shots, sluggish editing and unimaginative framing. Even a ‘getting ready for work’ montage at the top of the film, the easiest way to set a film’s rhythm, lingers on each shot a couple of beats too long.
It’s not helped by an equally flabby script. The “Hear that?” scene is the film’s only bit of direct address – the only moment we have a direct and enthusiastic window into Davis’ passion for rock music and rock radio, the only moment we get a personalised idea of what motivates him.
The film’s just too caught up in the importance of rock music to care about conveying rock music’s visceral, antiestablishment appeal during that era, and we lose the energy and vibrancy of the scene that gave birth to Hauraki in favour of dialogue that’s exposition-heavy (“Is that Jim Willis? Minister for Broadcasting?”), repetitive (there’s a scene in a hangar about 20 minutes in that tells us everything we’ve already picked up) and often just plain bad (Davis is actually described as “just a maverick with a crazy idea” at one point).
The aimless performances only add to the film’s dramatic inertia – Matt Whelan acts with everything but his tired eyes, and Dan Musgrove, so effortlessly funny in Tom Sainsbury’s Yeti is Dead/I Am Tom, sounds like he’s forcing dialogue out of his mouth.
3 Mile Limit would’ve been radical, formally and culturally, in 1965. That would’ve been a ‘positive aspect’ back then. It’s not really cutting it now.