The Empty Beach is a 1985 Australian thriller film based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Peter Corris, starring Bryan Brown as private investigator Cliff Hardy.
"[6] Cliff Hardy iinquires into the disappearance of a beautiful woman's wealthy husband from Bondi Beach.
[9] In the early 1980s Bryan Brown was attached to star as Cliff Hardy in an adaptation of an earlier Corris novel, White Meat.
"[4] Several years later producers Tim Read and John Edwards bought an option to The Empty Beach and wanted to make a film starring Bryan Brown as Cliffy Hardy.
I thought putting a pro on the job was a good idea and I'd have been happy with a joint credit.
"[13] Bob Weis says he and director Chris Thomson worked on Keith Dewhust's final draft.
"[6] Director Chris Thomson said Hardy "is inuitive, impulsive and with a healthy old fashioned morality of right and wrong.
The female lead, supposed to be whippet-thin and feisty, was so when cast but was pregnant by the time of shooting and wore enveloping garments.
Music video of the single also had some moderate TV airplay which features both Marc Hunter and Wendy Matthews.
[20] The film performed poorly at the box office in Australia, Jonathan Chissick of Hoyts calling it "an absolute disaster".
[21] Corris said "Cruelly, but accurately, a young person I knew declared that its title should have been The Empty Cinema.
[citation needed] Filmnews wrote "Peter Corris' modest narrative line in the original novel has been literally blown out by Keith Dewhurst's screenplay, and the result is an incomprehensible farrago of plots, subplots, and characters, linked by private detective Cliff Hardy's mood riffs — this consists of Bryan Brown looking, by turns, quizzical, worldweary or pissed off — and punctuated by set piece confrontations with big city corruption, monumental in symbolism but cryptic in significance.
"[23] The Canberra Times called it "a breath of fresh air to blow away the dust that has settled on the private-eye genre during too many decades of too many bland, inane TV pot-boilers.
"[24] David Stratton felt the 94 minute version was more successful than the final 89 minute version which "speeds by at a pace which is occasionally too fast to take in" though he felt Brown "is the perfect Cliff Hardy: cynical, witty, tough and resourceful.
"[25] There have been a number of attempts over the years to revive the character, including a television series, and a film starring Paul Hogan, but as at 2025 no other Cliff Hardy story has been dramatised for screen.