- Film Review
- Reviewed By Andrew Collins
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2 out of 5
There's no faulting Baz Luhrmann's ambition: this old-fashioned, $130 million epic romantic adventure was intended as his Gone with the Wind. At the start of the Second World War, Nicole Kidman's hoity-toity English lady arrives in Australia to confront a husband she believes is being unfaithful. The stunning vistas of northern Australia provide built-in visual splendour, and the spit-and-sawdust world of cattle ranching is personified by Hugh Jackman's cross between Indiana Jones and "Crocodile" Dundee. Unfortunately the action, built around a feud about land ownership and Kidman and Jackman's on-off affair, veers from melodramatic to plain silly. Luhrmann attempts to weld a screwball comedy to a romance, a western and a war movie, while not patronising the Aborigines (which Luhrmann seeks to sanctify in a subplot involving an orphaned half-Aboriginal, half-white child that Kidman befriends) - aiming for camp excess while demanding that we take the film seriously - but is defeated by the task. One day it may become a cult classic, but for now, Australia is really his Pearl Harbor.
Plot Summary
Romantic period drama directed by Baz Luhrmann, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. In the weeks approaching the Second World War, an English aristocrat travels to Australia to confront her errant husband. There she forms an unlikely bond with a drover as she strives protect the huge ranch she has inherited.
Cast and crew
Cast
- Lady Sarah Ashley
- Nicole Kidman
- The drover
- Hugh Jackman
- Neil Fletcher
- David Wenham
- King Carney
- Bryan Brown
- Kipling Flynn
- Jack Thompson
- King George
- David Gulpilil
- Nullah
- Brandon Walters
- Magarri
- David Ngoombujarra
- Dutton
- Ben Mendelsohn
- Cath Carney
- Essie Davis
- Administrator Allsop
- Barry Otto
- Dr Barker
- Bruce Spence
- Ivan
- Jacek Koman
- Ramsden
- Ray Barrett
- Skipper (Qantas Sloop)
- Bill Hunter
- Sergeant
- John Jarratt
Crew
- Director
- Baz Luhrmann
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