Outback and beyond

Nick Cave is sick. Sick of slick Hollywood action flicks that stack corpses like skyscrapers just to get kids through the door on a Friday night. “They are basically just relentless body counts,” the lanky tunesmith states.

You’ll know by now of course that Cave has turned from songs to scripts. His movie, The Proposition, a dust-covered Aussie tale of brotherhood against establishment, hits cinemas today - and dare we say it, it includes a touch of violence, doesn’t it?

“Indeed, but an attempt was made here not to exhaust the audience through having to sit through blood and guts for two hours,” Cave states. “There are genuinely sensitive moments, and an intelligence to the script and the dialogue. For the type of film it is and the period it’s set in, I personally found the violence quite restrained.”

Laden with atmosphere and bulging with drama, it comes as a big fat surprise that star Guy Pearce took so flamin’ long to leap onboard.

“I actually read it at a point when I’d done a bit too much work,” the LA Confidential star tells us. “Then a year later Nick rang me at home and reminded me about the script and I immediately launched back into reading it again, feeling nervous that it nearly got away.”

Lining up alongside the Memento star are Brit heavyweights John Hurt, Emily Watson and Ray Winstone, the latter as the lawman who orders Pearce to track and kill his older brother, to save his younger brother’s life.

The trailer for The Proposition can be seen on the movie's official website by clicking here .