The New Zealand indie film Northspur is set in a plague-torn future where roaming bandits threaten remote settlements.
Starring the late Marshall Napier (Bellbird) and Josh McKenzie (Filthy Rich), it's directed by Aaron Falvey (Rock Bottom).
No one can accuse the makers of Northspur - director Aaron Falvey and writer Justin Eade - of thinking small.
None of your 'moody, man-alone searching for meaning in his life' for them.
In Northspur, war breaks out around the world, an electromagnetic pulse takes out the power all over Australasia, and disease wipes out most of the country.
And that's just in the first minute.
This being a micro-budget production, all of this action takes place in a quick opening caption, of course, and we open two years later on an idyllic valley.
A couple, Melinda and Kellen - Delaney Tabron and Josh McKenzie - lead a peaceful life there, scaring off roaming marauders with "warning shots".
But one day, Melinda is injured, and infected with that disease we were reading about. Kellen gives her his one gun - for warning shots, remember? - and goes off to look for some drugs.
Kellen runs into a bit of luck - a well-appointed shack that looks like the sort of place that might have a stash of medicine inside.
He'll soon find out. He's looking down the barrel of a shotgun, with the daunting presence of Marshall Napier behind it.
It was actually the final performance by the late Napier, for years a wonderfully reliable screen heavy on both sides of the Tasman, before a charming, lighter performance in the film Bellbird.
In Northspur, he plays with his more familiar persona - both menacing and deadpan funny as the shack-owner Summers.
Summers will give Kellen all the help he needs if in return he helps ward off some invaders. Quite a few invaders.
Aside from the walking randoms we saw before, there's one group led by a particularly hostile Michael Hurst, and another group, led by someone called Shell.
There may have been initial plans to explain in detail who all these people are - one group is linked to Summers, another has a family connection with Kellen, if you care.
But clearly writer/director Aaron Falvey realised we don't care much. It's enough to know there's a bunch of heavily-armed people with a grudge coming at us, and we need to keep them out.
Kellen is conflicted - can he ward off the bad guys and still maintain his pacifist ideals?
Summers has no faith in warning shots only, and happily circles the shack, taking out marauders with extreme prejudice.
Slightly less satisfying are the constant cutbacks to the wounded Melinda at the old homestead. Not enough happens to her to warrant being distracted from Summers' fortress where most of the action is taking place.
Though she does pick up an endearing little girl with a nice line in snappy dialogue.
Northspur is another New Zealand film title with no explanation in the movie. Couldn't they have put up a road sign that reads "Northspur welcomes careful drivers" or something?
But the best part of the story of Northspur is that it's been picked up by movie giant Lionsgate for release overseas. You can't beat a happy ending.
