f13.net forums - Two Hands (1999)

"Two Hands" is an early Heath Ledger film that attracted a lot of positive attention when it was released, but I didn't see it until recently.

The gist of it is that Ledger plays Jimmy, a slighly dim-bulb thug, who is given a simple job to do by local crime boss Pando (Bryan Brown): deliver $10k to an address. Unfortunately he has the money stolen from him, and the rest of the film moves between him trying to get $10k back to Pando and his interest in country girl Alex (Rose Byrne). There's a cross-over story arc with two street kids who steal the money from Jimmy and a quite annoying dead narrator who I think is Jimmy's brother who crossed Pando himself.

I watched this to see how Ledger started out and he's very natural in the role of Jimmy (certainly more natural than Byrne). He's able to pull off both the emotional arc Jimmy goes through and also the comedy scenes (the build-up and bank robbery is actually quite funny). The script has problems - it slows down in parts, there are lot of coincidences and "exactly how dumb are you Jimmy?" moments - but it also sits above average in the the quirky crime movie genre from the time period.

One thing "Two Hands" reminded me was how good an actor Bryan Brown can be - Pando is a ruthless crime boss, but no sadist and a man who loves his family. Brown does a great job of making the character live on screen.

Anyway, probably not a must see film but it was a movie that helped launch both Ledger and Byrne into Hollywood.