Ned Kelly Movie Review:

Victoria, Australia 1878 and the Irish immigrants were the brunt of victimisation and prejudice by the local police. Chief among these persecuted folk was Ned Kelly (Ledger) and his family but when one of the local constables didn’t take too kindly to a rejection by Ned’s sister, he accused Kelly of shooting him. A bounty was then put on his, his friends and his family’s head payable alive or dead. Ned decided to take this injustice and become a modern day Robin Hood, robbing banks to fund his gang and give money to his fellow Irish people.

Australia’s most famous outlaw Ned Kelly makes his third big screen outing and still ends up with a metal bucket on his head.

Adapted from the novel “Our Sunshine” by Robert Drewe, this is a more honest and gritty telling of the Aussie outlaw who became a national hero and an embarrassment to the Victoria police. Oz director Gregor Jordan (Buffalo Soldiers) injects real passion into the look and feel of the picture by building characters and the situations as the film heads towards the famous Glenrowan shootout. We learn about the reasons behind the Kelly Gang’s actions and the lengths the police force went to, to capture them, all played out in the arid, barren Australian Outback.

Heath Ledger is well cast as Kelly. He was only 23 when all of this was happening but Ledger’s performance gives him the demeanour and presence that you’d expect from a gang and community leader. Orlando Bloom continues to excel in his career and despite a dodgy final scene, gives another fine performance as Kelly’s best friend and right hand man Joe Byrne. There are also good performances from the remaining gang members played by Joel Edgerton, Laurence Kinlan and Phil Barantini.

The beautiful and extremely talented Naomi Watts plays Kelly’s love interest Julia Cook with a certain demure and Geoffrey Rush is his usual commanding self as the man charged with bringing the gang to justice, Superintendent Hare.

What the movie lacks is any real explanation to why the local police and later the authorities has such problems with Ned Kelly. What starts off as a racial dislike and unrequited lust towards Kelly’s sister, far too quickly turns into an extremely excessive and violent blood hunt by police and the Australian government, all on the word of one, extremely resentful and dishonest man. The movie could have done to be longer and more revealing of the actions that bring the gang to confrontation at Glenrowan.

Ned Kelly is an interesting look into the famous Aussie outlaw but it could have been so much more with a slightly bigger budget and more detail. Even so I don’t think tin buckets will ever become fashionable.

3 out of 5

Jamie Kelwick

The Usher

This film is based on "Our Sunshine" by Robert Drew, a novel based on the life of Australian bushranger and icon, Ned Kelly. It tells of his life as a bushranger in north-west Victoria, where he lived all his life. He, his brother Dan, and two other men, Steve Hart and Joe Byrne, formed a gang. These four robbed a bank and hijacked an entire town for 3 days. They killed three policemen who were hunting them. They then took over a pub in Glenrowan, where they basically held a party, waiting for a train full of police to derail at a part of the track that they tore up. However a school teacher warned the train, so the gang and all the others in the pub ended up in a shootout with scores of policemen.

Do true stories make great movies? In the case of Ned Kelly the answer is a resounding yes. Ned Kelly stars Heath Ledger as the legendary Australian criminal Ned Kelly.

The movie opens, with what seems to be a running symbolism of water, with Ned Kelly saving a young boy from drowning. This firmly sets out the stall of the movie to try and show us that Ned Kelly was not just a criminal. This the movie achieves in spades, showing a human and doomed, almost from the outset, character. Kelly’s story is a sad one, and is to be commended at the way they have depicted this in the movie, such as the scene at the start where he is beaten by the Police for allegedly stealing a horse, and attacking the policeman who badly overreacted at the situation by trying to shoot him.

Ned Kelly is the son of an Irish immigrant, and the movie sharply shows how badly the Irish were treated, being symbolic today with the continual immigration throughout the world and the treatment that is dealt to today’s.

This is Gregor Jordan’s follow up movie to Buffalo Soldiers, but due to the problems that movie had with its political tone, this will probably be seen by many audiences first. That’s not to say this movie isn’t political, with it’s damning indictment of a corrupt police system. Jordan handles well the doomed nature of Kelly and his gang, and how at every turn the establishment was out to stop him.

The template that the movie follows is very much Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with the standoff at the end of the movie. Considering this is a true story it’s not a criticism as thestand off at the end of the movie is a really powerful and emotionally involving scene. You are truly disgusted at the brutality of the police, indiscriminately shooting innocent civilians. This movie follows in the tradition of the best westerns, being quite Peckinpah in it’s depiction of the action.

Heath Ledger gives his strongest performance to date, he is more of a movie star than a great actor with his presence and charisma, he imbues Kelly with a great sense of strength, warmth and humanity. His voiceover is to be commended as well. I’m not a fan of voiceovers as they are generally clumsy, conveying plot that doesn’t need to be explained, but here it is used to great effect to convey tone and feeling.

The cinematography is wonderful as well. We’ve all seen Australia on TV, not like this we haven’t. Radiant, bleached views of scrubland, wildlife and bizarre looking trees all help to show us somewhat bleak looking, poisoned land.

Orlando Bloom, and Geoffrey Rush provide supporting roles. Bloom making more of his as Kelly’s gangmate, he certainly mastered the Irish accent. Rush’s role however is painfully thin, and I would have preferred to have had this developed more. Naomi Watt’s character provides Kelly’s fictional love interest, and this is probably the least essential part of the movie, feeling like it was inserted at Hollywood’s bequest. She does master her English accent well, which rather is bizarre considering she is Australian!

The other members of the Kelly Gang are mere cyphers as far as their characters go, but their final scene in the movie is painfully sad. Rachel Cook has a light, silly, frivolous cameo in the movie that serves as the movie’s only light relief, with the rest of the movie delivered in a serious manner.

There were two movies this movie reminded me of, Gladiator and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and it can certainly stand its own against these.

Gary Gray

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