MARGARET & DAVID GIVE THE JAMMED 8 STARS ON AT THE MOVIES

The Jammed
Review by David Stratton

Ashley Hudson, (VERONICA SYWAK), works in a Melbourne office. There’s nothing unusual about her, she’s just broken up with her boyfriend, but otherwise she lives a normal life.And then, by chance, she meets Sunee, (AMANDA MA), who has come from China searching for her missing daughter, Rubi, (SUN PARK). Ashley reluctantly agrees to help Sunee, but the trail proves to be a dangerous one. Rubi is working as a sex slave along with Crystal, (EMMA LUNG), and Vanya, (SASKIA BURMEISTER). Writer-director Dee McLachlan has fashioned a fine thriller on a serious theme: the sex slave trade in Australia.The film works so well because the protagonist, very well played by VERONICA SYWAK, is so convincing as an average person caught up in this illicit and very confronting trade.Without being over-explicit, McLachlan vividly depicts the brutality of the sex trade, the hopelessness of the young victims, far from home, raped and abused and forced into prostitution by brutal thugs.It’s an added irony that the boss of the gang, played by ANDREW S. GILBERT, is a "respectable" citizen whose wife runs an upmarket art gallery.THE JAMMED was shot on HD video, and it’s been skilfully made in every department and all of the actors are remarkable; it’s better than many more heavily publicised Australian films and it deserves to be widely seen.

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