“Films like Shoot the Moon and Kramer vs. Kramer may have demarcated the emotional territory, but Roger Donaldson's Smash Palace most deftly explores the disintegration of love and the destruction of a marriage. Race driver Al Shaw meets Jacqui on the European racing circuit. Seven years later, in the New Zealand countryside at Al's auto-wrecking yard, aptly named Smash Palace, the marriage hits the skids and goes into a fatal spin. Al's obsessive, mad reactions are worthy of tabloid exploitation: confused, lonely, he kidnaps his beloved daughter and the chase is on. What makes Smash Palace such a smashing success are the acute, true performances of the Shaw family: co-screenwriter Bruno Lawrence as Al, Anna Jemison as the delicate misfit Jacqui, and Greer Robson as Georgie, rendering a performance which Pauline Kael declared ‘beyond praise'. Director Donaldson has kept the scale intimate, homey, and direct. The clear southern light and varied New Zealand landscapes (bush, brush, jungle, mountains) are captured by cinematographer Graeme Cowley so that each frame serves the story.” Sally Syberg