A character study on how two acting greats are underutilized in a sluggish script.
Eric Bana walks into frame like a man made of granite. Sam Neill squints toward the sun, jaw locked in timeless weariness. On paper, Untamed should’ve been a triumph — a slow-burn Western steeped in moral ambiguity and frontier grit, anchored by two of the most quietly commanding actors working today. Instead, it sputters out like a campfire left too long unattended, leaving Bana and Neill stranded in a desert of beautiful nothingness.
There’s a difference between stoic and static, and Untamed doesn’t seem to know where the line is — or that it exists at all. The six-part Netflix miniseries sells itself as brooding and deliberate, but somewhere between its panoramic drone shots of dry brush and dialogue that sounds like it was filtered through a dust storm, the show forgets to give its characters anything to actually do. It's less "slow-burn mystery" and more "existential waiting room."
Let’s be clear: Eric Bana and Sam Neill are not the problem. In fact, they’re the only flickers of electricity in an otherwise drained battery. Bana brings his usual simmering intensity to the role of Jack Morland, a disgraced ranger whose past is meant to haunt the present, but never really materializes beyond some artfully lit scowling. Neill plays Father Jude, a whiskey-sipping priest with a rifle under his robe and pain behind his eyes — a role that screams “scene-stealer” but is somehow reduced to mumbled parables and a few slow walks into town.
Both actors perform as if the material might eventually give them something to sink their teeth into. It doesn’t. Instead, they’re left to glower meaningfully at dust storms, exchange cryptic one-liners, and wear the hell out of wide-brimmed hats. What should be an acting showcase becomes a cinematic wasteland — the acting equivalent of trying to cook a steak on a stove that never turns on.
What’s most frustrating about Untamed is how clearly it thinks it’s deep. It borrows the aesthetic cues of prestige drama — amber lighting, mournful string arrangements, tight close-ups held just a beat too long — but confuses mood with meaning. The plot, which nominally revolves around a missing girl and the unraveling of long-buried secrets, moves forward in fits and starts, often retreating into flashbacks that offer neither clarity nor emotional payoff.
Dialogue is delivered in a hush, not because the characters are sharing something sacred, but seemingly because the script is afraid of saying anything too direct. Everyone speaks in ellipses. Conversations dangle without resolution. And while this kind of narrative minimalism can work in the right hands (see True Detective Season 1 or The Proposition), here it just feels like undercooked writing disguised as artistic restraint.
It’s a disservice not just to the audience, but to Bana and Neill — two performers who specialize in restrained, tightly-coiled emotion. In a richer, more confident story, their silences would speak volumes. Here, they whisper into a void. There are no real arcs, no internal reckoning, no tension that earns its release. Just vague trauma references, cowboy stares, and a whole lot of boots crunching on gravel.
There’s a particular cruelty in watching talented actors shoulder a weightless script. Bana, whose work in The Dry and Munich showed his talent for haunted resilience, is forced to anchor a character with no real compass. Neill, capable of so much nuance (see Hunt for the Wilderpeople or even Peaky Blinders), is given an outline of a tragic figure but none of the shading that would make it resonate.
Visually, the series is often stunning — sunsets wash the outback in firelight, dust particles drift like ghosts through abandoned churches — but cinematography alone can’t replace story. And without a meaningful script to support them, even actors of Bana and Neill’s caliber become like statues: weathered, dignified, and tragically immobile.
By the end of Untamed, you don’t feel heartbroken or provoked. You feel like you’ve watched six hours of foreplay with no payoff. It’s the kind of show where nothing is said plainly, everything is implied, and somehow, nothing sticks. The mystery fizzles. The emotions never peak. And the final revelation lands like a sigh, not a shudder.
It’s a shame. Because Bana and Neill are titans of underplayed intensity, and they deserve scripts that give them space to erupt, not just smolder. Stoic is a tool — a powerful one — but when overused, it calcifies into static. And static is what Untamed ultimately becomes: a series that mistakes silence for strength, restraint for depth, and ambiance for story.
Give these men a script with blood in its veins next time. They’ve more than earned it.
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