Set in Australia in the 1920s, The Tracker methodically follows three white mounted policemen and an aboriginal tracker as they pursue a fugitive bushman accused of murdering a white woman deep in the heart of the Outback. The pursuit, troubled and inefficient as it is, rapidly becomes secondary to the tension-filled racial dynamic that develops between the savvy, pragmatic, passive-aggressive tracker and the group's trigger-happy leader (Gary Sweet, playing a character referred to in the press materials as The Fanatic), who seems to believe that just being black is a crime worthy of capital punishment. Can an aboriginal man receive justice in a poisoned system predicated on institutional racism? "Hell, no" is the answer, part of the indictment of racism and imperialism that The Tracker wields like a blunt instrument. As The Fanatic's offenses against humanity become more flagrant and less forgivable, the immoral conventional law he represents gives way to a higher natural moral law, and the team's power dynamic undergoes a dramatic shift, as the powerless become powerful and vice versa. For much of The Tracker, director and soundtrack lyricist Rolf de Heer plays an extended game of show-and-tell, via intermittently powerful, eloquent images and painfully earnest, moralizing protest songs. As the film's enigmatic tracker, David Gulpilil gives a multi-dimensional performance that adds much-needed ambiguity and dark humor to a film that has difficulty saying anything more complicated than "Racism is bad." Gulpilil, a solid cast, and gorgeous scenery keep The Tracker watchable, but they can't mask the fact that as an adventure, it's sluggish, and as a film about racism, it's often reductive and clumsy.