The 1940s have never looked more like the 1980s than in Michael Jenkins� Rebel, from 1985.
Debra Byrne belts out bombastic and anachronistic pop tune after pop tune, including the Top 40 hit �Heroes�. Production designer Brian Thomson dresses 1940s Sydney in the same garish neon reds as in his previous movie, Street Hero, set in 1984!
Matt Dillon seems shrunken as a US soldier and Rebel of the title. He�s tired of fighting and goes AWOL while on shore leave in Sydney, 1942. A suave conman (Bryan Brown�s moustachioed Tiger) fixes him passage on a boat out of the city, but for an exorbitant price. The offer comes too late anyway, for Rebel has fallen for Byrne�s nightclub singer, whose husband is away fighting.
There�s precious little chemistry between Bryne and Dillon. Byrne seems more like Dillon�s mother than lover. When she finally comes on to Rebel, he looks in danger of being eaten. Dillon seems undecided as to whether he�s playing a courageous man or contemptuous coward. It�s hard to feel much sympathy for either of them.
Unlike Phillipe Mora�s superior Death of a Soldier, also set during the influx of US soldiers into Australian in 1942, Rebel fails to establish a realistic context for the action. Based on a non-musical play, No Names No Pack Drill, the film�s stage origins are shamelessly apparent. Rebel is loud, shrill and empty-headed.