Kris McQuade
Occupation
Actor
Ned Kelly Review
Weak
Plied with fiction and short on depth, the new biopic of legendary Australian outlaw Ned Kelly plays like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" without the excitement, charm and humor.
Bearded and brooding but otherwise uncharismatic, Heath Ledger stars as the folk-hero bushranger (Aussie for "cowboy"), who according to this film was an upstanding citizen of the Outback frontier until contemptible, crooked, downright sinister lawmen drove him to a life of crime by picking on his family.
They jailed his ma, molested his teenage sister, and falsely accused him and his brothers of horse rustling. They "started a war" against us, Kelly says in voice-over. "So I killed their coppers. I robbed their banks."
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