The Wild West ain't no place for a lady and that proves to be true even when the sun-baked plains of Central Otago and South Canterbury stand in for the High Sierra in Good for Nothing, which opened in Queenstown last week.
A full house of 69 invited guests saddled up for the premier in Reading Cinemas, Queenstown, on Thursday night.
The opening night was distinguished by the attendance of Wellington-based couple lead actress co-producer Inge Rademeyer and writer-director-co-producer Mike Wallis.
Mr Wallis, a former Queenstown resident, told the crowd Good for Nothing was "a six-year labour of love and a group effort up and down the country".
"Everybody chipped in to make it happen and it's a buzz to bring it back to Central Otago."
The Wakatipu was well represented from the first frame of the quirky action adventure movie, as English rose Isabella Montgomery (acting newcomer Rademeyer, originally from South Africa) delicately disembarked from the unmistakable Kingston Flyer for a cart ride to her family ranch and new life.
However, an ill-advised pit-stop in a saloon leads to our gal's kidnapping by a grizzled monosyllabic gunslinger known only as "The Man" (Cohen Holloway, who was down Wakatipu way earlier this year to act in Jane Campion's mini-series Top of the Lake).
Something close to a romance blooms like a cactus as the unlikely couple ride across terrain beyond the back of beyond, with a bloodthirsty posse in hot pursuit, while the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra plays with all guns blazing.
The first-time director let action speak louder than words and unashamedly channelled the shoestring budgeted "Spaghetti Westerns" by Sergio Leone for his "Pavlova Western".
Those humbling vast plains of the lower South Island offer films multimillion-dollar production values for "free", as Sir Peter Jackson will attest.
But Wallis audaciously shot the Western archetypes through with deadpan Kiwi humour, not only in the macho cowboy's longing to have his wicked way with Isabella, but, most memorably, a Mexican stand-off.
Good for Nothing is definitely good for demonstrating New Zealand film-makers can take any genre and make it their own and this is one film which must be seen on the silver screen to marvel at those epic landscapes up the road.
Special screening
Dorothy Brown's Cinema, Arrowtown, hosts a special screening of Good for Nothing with question and answer session with Mike Wallis and Inge Rademeyer afterwards, on Sunday, June 3 at 7.45pm.
Tickets are the normal prices, bookings recommended.
