The 1996 Australian dark comedy and crime film Idiot Box wastes no time in establishing a direction. In the first scene, two unemployed twentysomethings wander the highway at night. The more self-destructive of the two (Ben Mendelsohn) stands in front of oncoming traffic until his slightly more sensible friend (Jeremy Sims) pushes him out of the way. They then share a good laugh and head home for an evening of beer and television. Those who think suburban nihilism is a purely American phenomenon need look no further to be proved wrong. Operating under the cinematic equivalent of a "loud fast rules" aesthetic, director David Caesar employs a flashy stylization to capture his characters' listlessness as they scrape together change (some of it stolen from the charity bucket of a local mall) for their nightly case of bitter, and make vague plans to rob a bank. That style contrasts sharply with the material, but for some reason, the restlessness works. In a film that's considerably more compelling than its subject would suggest, Mendelsohn and Sims bring humanity to their antipodean Beavises, and Caesar nicely captures his small world of garage-based drugs-and-arms dealers and sidewalk liquor stores. Caesar's subjects have few prospects, less ambition, and no compelling reason to turn off the television; their bank-robbery scheme seems an almost acceptable way to pass the time. Caesar clearly has the moves of a skillful director, and his forthcoming film Dirty Deeds is slated to feature John Goodman, Toni Collette, and Sam Neill, so he might even get a chance to put those moves to more interesting use. The greatest flaw of this intriguing early effort is that it places its characters on a road to nowhere that's been traveled too many times before.