On paper, it sounds like your everyday revenge drama [...] but writer-director Michôd ensures, from its opening shot to its last second, that the film is anything but.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 9, 2024

The Rover has an intriguing story and an incredible central performance, and even has some wonderful direction with a real sense of grit. But the film’s lack of focus between character conflict and setting fails to create a building connection...

| Original Score: B- | Jun 17, 2024

…with two immersive lead performances, a desolate atmosphere and some gasp-inducing bursts of in-your-face action, The Rover is a thought-provoking minor slice of sci-fi, all the better for keeping the stakes small…

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 11, 2023

It’s a grubby, callous, and ferocious film that takes what looks like limitations and uses them as great strengths.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 25, 2022

Refreshingly shot on film by cinematographer Natasha Braier, The Rover's presentation looks gorgeous and trance-like in its long, measured shots of dilapidated towns, purple-hued skies at dusk, and barren countryside.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 5, 2022

It's a morbid and spellbinding film.

| Original Score: B | Apr 5, 2022

The Rover is Robert Pattinson's coming-out party as an actor; we now know what the Twilight star is capable of, so he no longer has the excuse to just brood onscreen.

| Jan 22, 2022

Guy Pearce is magnetic...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 15, 2021

A frustrating movie, and not because of its glacial pacing or taciturn characters, but because it fails to push its desolate, neo-noir Western themes all the way.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 1, 2021

A grim, gritty addition to the post-apocalyptic genre that makes the world of Mad Max look downright cheery in comparison.

| Original Score: A | Jul 7, 2020

Tonally intriguing, Michôd's latest poses numerous questions but withholds almost all of the answers.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 3, 2019

Michôd still has it ... but his sophomore effort warrants more intriguing content within its solid set-up.

| Oct 10, 2018

If only the director had had the confidence to tell him to do 50% less, this would have been an excellent performance. Pattinson is well cast as a confused redneck.

| Feb 21, 2018

... the film still manages to maintain a fierce tension despite the flaws in its fractured plot and characterisation.

| Sep 27, 2017

In the sweat-soaked Rover, everybody appears to have cut their own hair with a pair of rusty scissors, but the look is more The Proposition than Mad Max.

| Aug 22, 2017

[David] Michôd propels The Rover at a deliberate pace, relishing the scenery of the outback, and the eccentrics that live there.

| Aug 15, 2017

While Michôd may not achieve that transcendental awakening in the vagabonds of this god-forsaken country, they've braved through enough hellfire for us to have mercy, and to care about them.

| May 11, 2016

Michôd has created a frighteningly realistic apocalyptic western that's entirely his own.

| Original Score: B | Apr 12, 2016

Poor plot aside, it boasts two stellar performances.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 28, 2016

Bleak, brutal, and ultimately pointless, the film stars Guy Pearce as a man whose car is stolen and who won't rest until he not only gets it back but also punishes, with extreme prejudice, the dirtbags who took it.

| Original Score: C- | Dec 3, 2014