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Ned Kelly (2003)

Director: Gregor Jordan

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From Time Out Film Guide

Ned was little more than a boy when he was wrongfully imprisoned for horse-thieving. Released, he finds it's impossible 'for an Irishman in Queen Victoria's colony to walk the straight and narrow'. Loutish English coppers force the issue, and soon Ned (Ledger), brother Dan (Kinlan), and muckers Steve and Joe (Barantini and Bloom) are setting Superintendent Hare (Rush) a merry dance across the outback, the most wanted men in all Australia. This version of the legendary tale is stuck uneasily between romantic myth-making and historical accountability. It's shot in muddy equatorial browns, and cutaways to local flora and fauna mark Ned as being at one with nature. But a quality conspicuously absent from Ledger's self-consciously heroic performance is any sense of wildness. He makes Ned a decent but ultimately rather dull underdog. Yhe shoot-outs are efficiently handled, but this feels terribly overfamiliar. (From Robert Drewe's novel Our Sunshine.) TCh.

Author: TCh 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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Cast & crew

Director: Gregor Jordan

Producer: Nelson Woss, Lynda House

Cast: Heath Ledger, Orlando Bloom, Naomi Watts, Joel Edgerton, Laurence Kinlan, Philip Barantini, Kerry Condon, Kris McQuade, Geoffrey Rush, Kiri Paramore, Emily Browning, Rachel Griffiths, Geoff Morrell full cast

Genre(s): Period/Swashbucklers

Duration: 110 mins

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