REVIEW: Australia (12A)

Never in a hurry to release his work, director Baz Luhrmann has directed just three (albeit celebrated) movies in the last sixteen years. For number four he returns to his homeland for what seems like the ultimate national movie - Australia’s most celebrated filmmaker directs two of the biggest Australian movie stars in a movie called, funnily enough, Australia.

English aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) inherits a small ranch, Faraway Downs, after her father dies under mysterious circumstances. Under pressure from the town’s monopolising businessman King Carney (Bryan Brown), Lady Ashley must drive the cattle across country in order to sell them and save the ranch. To do this, she reluctantly hires The Drover (Hugh Jackman) to take charge of the drive, with help from a small mixed race Aboriginal boy named Nullah (Brandon Walters). The pair must overcome arid landscape, Carney’s henchmen and even the Japanese invasion of Darwin to preserve both their way of life and Nullah’s safety.

Mixing elements of the western and war drama, it perhaps tries to fit too much and so lacks a lot of direction. A lot of heart goes into the story, but a stellar cast (especially some tremendous Australian character actors in supporting roles) is unfortunately let loose with too much scope and some very silly lines. After sixteen years of putting on the glitz with the Red Curtain Trilogy (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo & Juliet and Moulin Rouge!), Luhrmann tries a different direction here to revive the epics of old, but unfortunately comes across as several unfinished movies packed into a mammoth running time.

There’s nothing devastatingly wrong with any of the performances, it’s just given such a muddled script they tend to lose their way occasionally. Nicole Kidman is a prime example of this. Whilst she isn’t awful, the Katharine Hepburn impression gets old very quickly and she shares some very corny scenes with Jackman. Speaking of Jackman, he has clearly seen this as his chance to be known as something other than Wolverine, and for the most part bring a lot of likeability to the role of The Drover. It’s not hugely memorable, but he puts his heart and soul into the performance and that comes across on screen. The two standouts are Jackman’s old Van Helsing chum David Wenham as the brilliantly nasty Fletcher, and a show-stopping turn by Brandon Walters and Nullah. Considering this is a first-time child actor literally plucked from obscurity for the film, he outshines all of his adult cast mates both in his sincere performance and captivating narration.

You will struggle to walk away from the cinema thinking of  Australia as anything but ‘ok’. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s difficult to recommend you spend nearly three hours of your life on a film that’s simply average. Enjoyable, but nowhere near the classic epic for the ages that Luhrmann and co. were aiming for.