Review: Ned Kelly

An account of famed Aussie bushranger/anti-hero Ned Kelly (Mick Jagger, with facial hair that makes him look like he ought to stick to barn raising), a petty Irish thief returned to his family (who immigrated to Australia) after three years in prison. Constant battles with the corrupt lawmen see Ned’s poor mum thrown in the clink as payback, and that sets Ned and his brothers (previously just horse thieves and petty crims) right off on a life of robbery and murder, now feeling persecuted by an unjust, British-ruled society. This of course, makes Ned and his gang folk heroes among the lower-class, anti-authority elements of society. Frank Thring turns up at the end as a judge.

Excellent-looking, but confused and rather uninteresting 1970 Tony Richardson (“The Entertainer”, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”) biopic is typical for a film about an Australian subject made by a foreign filmmaker. Richardson sees the story of the Kelly gang as a typical Hollywood western, complete with totally inappropriate (and really quite bad) country-folk songs written by someone named Shel Silverstein, and sung (terribly) by country star Waylon Jennings (a long way from “The Dukes of Hazzard” in terms of quality of the music). The Yanks seemed to find these songs to be the best thing in the film (and perhaps the film will play better to international audiences not as close to the story), but to us Aussies, it’s a bit ‘on the nose’, to say the least.

It has some decent moments, but overall it just doesn’t work, including the hard-working but far too diminutive Jagger in the lead role. As a musical performer, the man is all swagger and dynamic stage presence. Here in a filmic world, he’s somewhat amiable but bland, and far, far too short for the role. Not surprisingly, his best moment in the film is when he churns out that old fave ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’. Why didn’t they get Jagger to contribute more songs to the film’s soundtrack? He may not be an Aussie (but then, most of our population during that period was British or Irish), but he’s a helluva lot closer to one than Waylon Freakin’ Jennings!

Excellent cinematography by Gerry Fisher (“The Offence”, “Highlander”), and some nice period detail, but this is an interesting failure at best, and well, not even all that interesting actually. And there’s practically nothing distinctly Aussie about it, aside from appearances by stalwarts Peter Sumner and Diane Craig. With a somewhat sanitised screenplay by Ian Jones (“The Lighthorsemen”) and the director, even a late cameo by the inimitable Frank Thring can’t perk things up much.

Dare I suggest I got little satisfaction out of this dour, wrong-headed film? Oh well, you can’t always get what you want. Oops. Sorry.

Rating: C