Buckley’s Chance is a likable family entertainment filmed around the New South Wales mining town of Broken Hill, popular with filmmakers wanting a dry-as-dust outback vibe from as far back as the 1971 thriller Wake in Fright through to Mad Max and beyond. It has other cinematic predecessors too, though more of that in a minute.

Victoria Hill in the film Buckley’s Chance

The plot concerns a New York-based mother and son, Gloria (Victoria Hill) and Ridley (Milan Burch) visiting the boy’s grandfather, Spencer (Bill Nighy), for the first time. This is in the wake of the early death of Gloria’s husband – the boy’s father – who grew up on Spencer’s sheep station but couldn’t wait to escape the outback life and ultimately Australia.

Full marks if you’ve already figured out that this is Crocodile Dundee turned inside out. Like that film, it’s a fish-out-of-water story. But instead of Dundee’s bush craftsman visiting Manhattan and immediately feeling out of place, this has New Yorkers experiencing something similarly uncomfortable when they arrive in the outback and find it virtually deserted. Like Dundee,...