Like HBO’s amazing series Deadwood, John Hillcoat’s striking The Proposition is possibly the grimmest, and grimiest imagining of the west in years. It’s a ruthless, unfettered and morally ambiguous vision of 1880s outback Australia in the midst of British colonialism; there’s nothing romantic here. Scripted by Nick Cave, who previously collaborated with Hillcoat on 1988’s powerful, gut-wrenching prison flick Ghosts... of the Civil Dead, the film juggles its various thematic traditions -- lawlessness, injustice, vengeance, strained family bonds -- into an atmospheric, stunningly shot and remorselessly fly-ridden picture whose elegiac evocation of time and place rivals Clint Eastwood’s The Unforgiven and Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man for revisionist intensity. Ray Winstone is brilliant as the towering figure of callous authority, who at home sheds his shell the best he can to play the compassionate and devoted husband. Pearce also turns in strong work as the sympathetic, conscience-stricken Charlie, whose his sense of guilt is complicated by his loyalty to family. John Hurt appears in a small but colourful role as a drunken bounty hunter searching for the Burns.