'Ned Kelly'
Or, Young Guns 3: Down Under

POOR, HUNTED , and hung (by the neck, that is) in life, Australia's legendary outlaw hero hasn't fared all that much better in the cinematic afterlife. In 1970, Tony Richardson directed a miscast Mick Jagger – Englishmen both, of all the nerve – in one stolid epic. Now Gregor Jordan applies so much whitewash to the famed tale that it emerges as the Aussie equivalent of year-end, prestige-by-numbers Oscar bait. (Failed Oscar bait, that is.) Heath Ledger plays the title figure, whose large Irish family in 1870s northwest Victoria has long been harassed by the authorities – the overbearing-English-overlords class system being very much the same at that point in rough colonial Australia as it was back "home" in the U.K. Accused of stealing a horse, Ned slugs a bullying copper. Soon he, best mate Joe Byrne (Orlando Bloom), and their alleged gang are fugitives "terrorizing" the wealthy landowner population, defying police, and delighting the much abused undercaste population with their antics, robbing banks and escaping back into the bush. Eventually an enormous manhunt seals their fate (and lasting fame). Lacking the snarky humor of Jordan's prior films (Buffalo Soldiers, Two Hands), Ned Kelly is handsome, clunky, and obvious. Ledger and Bloom are credibly grunged down, but their figures aren't given any non-iconic breathing room. Geoffrey Rush hardly justifies employment with his few scenes as the gang's chief pursuer; Naomi Watts even less so in a (presumably fictive) role as a proper English wife who goes all weak-kneed over Ned's ruffian sex appeal. The film is so square it barely exploits the deep strangeness of the Kelly gang's last stand: they appeared in custom-made bulletproof iron "suits," looking for all the world like 1950s science fiction movie robots. Yes, Ned was a man with imaginative spark, a quality you will not find in this deluxe, pedestrian rehash. (Dennis Harvey)