Real-life hoofer Jesco White, the Dancing Outlaw, was warped by a hardscrabble childhood and a desire to avenge the murder of his toe-tapping Appalachian daddy.
Dominic Murphy’s pseudo-biopic is as visually assured as it is audacious, but behind the slickly edited imagery, the debutant’s storytelling is exposed by shallow characterisation and a screenplay that fails to provide more than superficial justification for White’s (Edward Hogg) bouts of brutal rage. Yet the use of Hasil Adkins’ frantic rockabilly is as inspired as the casting of Carrie Fisher, who excels as the wife who abandons her family to party with the laudably unhinged Hogg.
