High Ground

High Ground (2021) is an Australian action thriller you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Stephen Johnson and shot entirely on location across the remote Northern Territory. The landscapes are extraordinary. The history underneath them is not.

Simon Baker plays Travis, a former soldier turned bounty hunter who witnessed a massacre of Aboriginal people and has been carrying the weight of it ever since. Jacob Junior Nayinggul plays Gutjuk, a young Indigenous man who survived that same slaughter as a child and is now trying to reach the last surviving member of his family. Their uneasy alliance takes them deep into the bush in pursuit of Baywara — a warrior fighting a one-man war against colonial authority, and the most dangerous person in the territory. Jack Thompson and Aaron Pedersen complete the principal cast.

High Ground works as a chase film but refuses to resolve cleanly into one. By the end, Travis and Gutjuk are no longer simply on the same side, which is where the film earns its keep — most stories about colonial guilt find a way to let the white protagonist off the hook. This one does not. Stream High Ground (2021) online on iFILM.