Heaven's Burning

Filmed - Sept 30, 1996 – mid Nov, 1996

Pictures

A black comedy, with a disheartened Japanese bride staging her kidnapping. When a gang of robbers do abduct her & the driver takes a shine to her. The two double-cross the gang & flee, with the cuckolded husband  in hot pursuit.

"Heaven's Burning" tells the story of a man and a woman who are inexplicably thrown together, amid violence and chaos. They quickly find themselves on the run from many adversaries, but find time to fall in love along the way.

Heaven's Burning is a strange little film made in Australia mostly in the stark outback.  Russell plays Colin a man with little direction and a big problem.  He is involved in a crime, and has acquired a companion, a runaway wife.  Heaven's Burning is an acquired taste.  Many people find this movie tragic, some find it bad, and a select few find it rather funny.  Without spoiling the plot I can only say it is worth the watch to see Russell doing a slightly less dominant role than we are used too.  He was forced to flatten his intellect in this role, and attempt to seem as "normal bloke next door" as possible.  He would have suceeded except for the natural charisma, hard to ditch that.  He never quite manages to disappear in a crowd, but Russell being who he is does a credible role, and manages too make us care about what happens to Colin.  The stand-out actor in this movie was the veteran Australian actor [Ray Barrett] who plays Russell's father. He added a poignancy to the movie that was missing.

Heaven's Burning was plagued with problems, Russell and his leading lady Youki Kudoh      are rumored to have not been on the same page so to speak, the director and Russell were at odds.  The director has said he had "too many suggestions", and Russell has inferred that he felt like he was making the story up as he went along.  The end result is an uneven, rambling, poorly conceived movie that even Russell could not totally save. But Lord knows he tried, and watching him work with what is there makes it a movie worth seeing.