Australia Review

Baz Luhrmann wanted a national epic and assembled at least three of them end to end: a screwball romance between an English lady and a cattleman, a droving picture across the Kimberley, and a war film about the bombing of Darwin. Each carries a real ending, which is why the thing runs close to three hours and appears to finish four separate times.

What holds is the middle. The drove itself, a thousand head of cattle pushed across country toward a cliff edge, is staged with scale that earns its music, and Mandy Walker's widescreen images of the Never Never justify the ambition on their own. What does not hold is the digital backdrop work, soft and plainly painted through the Darwin sequences, pulling the eye out of the frame at the exact moments belief is required.

Brandon Walters, eleven years old and untrained, is the most convincing presence on screen, and the Stolen Generations material he carries gets more seriousness than the romance around it. Kidman spends the first reel on broad comedy that does not suit her. Jackman is asked to embody laconic Australian manhood and mostly does, though the camera keeps stopping to admire him.