Ned Kelly must not have been quite as heroic a figure as Rob Roy because he didn't get a cocktail named after him. I don't mean to be flippant about this man, it's just that Gregor Jordan telling of Kelly's legend (based upon Robert Drewe's book Our Sunshine) is a bit short on back-story leaving the audience to sort-out Kelly's place in history for themselves.

The film takes place in Australia (circa 1880) and demonstrates the immutable law of human nature, that being the English and the Irish have trouble getting along no matter where you put them. The film introduces us to the Kelly gang, Ned's mother, brothers and sisters and there are a few flashbacks that lend a bit of insight into Kelly's psyche - particularly one that involves his father. Kelly's father was also a man not unfamiliar with trouble, who also met with an untimely demise.

Most of the film is well put together. Heath Ledger's portrayal of the legendary martyr is solid and there are moments toward the end of the film where his full beard and longer hair made him look a great deal like Val Kilmer. Kelly's problems more or less start as a result of his unwillingness to cow down to the British police force, who pretty much treat the Irish as garbage and commonly abuse them without fear of reprisal. Ultimately the reprisal come in the form of the Kelly gang.

After being accused of a murder he didn't commit and learning that his mother has been incarcerated as an accomplice, Kelly sets about forming a gang with his brother Dan and two friends - Steve Hart (Philip Barantini) and Joe Byrne (Orlando Bloom). Before I proceed, I'd just like to quickly point out that Bloom's performance in this film is strong as well, and should put to rest the concerns of LOTR fans who have seen the elfin archer take a beating from the critics in both Troy and POTC (that's Pirates of the Carribean - not Passion of the Christ).

The Kelly gang commence to make as much trouble for the British establishment as possible, robbing banks, shooting cops when shot against and speaking out against the brutish and unjust system.
This film doesn't necessarily glamorize Kelly, but then again it doesn't really have to. Kelly was a man who reacted to the persecution and injustice suffered by his people and much of the money he robbed was used as bail for the hundreds of Irishmen wrongfully imprisoned (some because of Kelly himself).

Thus Ned Kelly was portrayed as a Robin Hood-like anti-hero and his contempt for the Crown soon results in an 8000 pound bounty on the gang's head, dead or alive. (At the time it was the highest bounty ever offered for anyone). The Bounty did not work as planned and so The Crown even sends in South African Superintendent Hare (Geoffrey Rush) to hunt the scoundrels down. At this point the movie pretty much becomes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Down Under. Rush's performance is not one that couldn't have been pieced together form clips of his earlier movies, and also wasted are Naomi Watts and Rachel Griffiths. All are allowed insufficient screen time and their roles are absolutely under-written one-dimensional and dull. Joel Edgerton (look for him in the charming The Night We Called if a Day) turns in one of the film's better performances as a friend of the gang who betrays them and as a result doesn't live much longer than Judas.

The climactic end is interesting and certainly a bit bizarre. The Gang has planned to ambush Hare and his troops by derailing their train and taking them on wearing their "now-famous" self-fashioned bullet proof body-armor. According to Drewe's telling an informant foils the derailing and the train is stopped before it can come to any harm, forcing the gang to hole-up in a station along with the members of a fairly sizable circus. This final showdown is quite well orchestrated and compelling to watch as it was shot at night in a heavy rainstorm, but I couldn't stop the little sarcastic guy who lives in the back of my brain from hollering things like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid join the Circus," and such. In any case the Kelly gang went down guns blazing (with the exception of two suicides) so in effect it was pretty much 2 against 200 (if you don't count the lion and the camel).

Though I've been a bit flip about this review, I did enjoy the film. Ledger proved equal to the challenge of stepping into the shoes of his legendary fellow countryman and Orlando Bloom proved that he has a career in films that cost less than 75 Million dollars. Another interesting sidenote is that Ned Kelly represents the second epic film in as many years that boiled down to a battle between Orlando Bloom and Geoffrey Rush.

When it's all said and done, I enjoyed this film as I'm sure any fan of American westerns would, the dialogue is solid throughout, the underdog story is compelling and the characters who are allowed to, acquit themselves well. I imagine a critic with a full knowledge of the details of Ned Kelly would probably take the film to task for being revisionist history, or take me to task for not treating it with the reverence it deserves. It so, no offense meant.