Ned Kelly

Reviewed by Adam Ford

The Australia of the 1880s as portrayed in Gregor Jordan’s Ned Kelly is very different to that of Neighbours today. For a start, it’s always either raining or very cloudy. Secondly, almost everyone has an Irish accent. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, people have problems other than their relationships. This being Hollywood, there is a ‘relationship’ of sorts, but it’s very much tacked-on and not central to the plot.
Based on the legendary Australian folk hero, Kelly (Heath Ledger) is the son of an Irishman sentenced to deportation for sheep stealing. He and his community of ex-pats live in the poverty-stricken shadow of English landowners and police persecution. After one brush with the law too many, Kelly and his friends (Orlando Bloom, Philip Barantini, Laurence Kinlin) go on the run as outlaws, robbing banks and burning land records, but, on Kelly’s insistence, behaving like proverbial gentlemen, even returning a man’s pocket watch in the bank they are holding-up. Despite a huge bounty on their heads, and a massive police operation, the gang evades capture for a long time, mostly thanks to the hero-worshipping cooperation of the Irish population. Eventually, however, the inevitable happens, and the cops, lead by Superintendent Hare (the show-stealing Geoffrey Rush) surround the gang’s hideout. It is only then that the forlorn nature of their efforts dawn on the gang members (“We never stood a chance, did we?” wails one, a gun to his head). And though their attempts to bring down their oppressors were doomed, they had a go, and gave a lot of people a lot of hope along the way. Perhaps that was the only kind of victory they could have hoped for.