Other Titles • Our Sunshine • Ned Kelly: Public Enemy No. 1 • The Kelly Gang (2002)
Synopses for Ned Kelly (2003)
1.
Reteaming for the first time since their breakthrough film Two Hands, director Gregor Jordan and actor Heath Ledger bring moviegoers the true story of their brave and iconoclastic countryman – Irish-Australian legend Edward “Ned” Kelly.
In the latter part of the 19th century, Australia is still largely untamed. The former penal colony’s first-generation Irish immigrant population lives in poverty. Having already experienced police brutality and the death of his father, bushranger Ned (Heath Ledger) is wrongfully imprisoned on the trumped-up charge of stealing a horse.
Emerging a few years later, in 1874, Ned is hardened but vows to stay straight. Rejoining his widowed mother and younger siblings, he makes money for his family as a champion bare-knuckle boxer. He also toils as a farmhand on the estate of an English landowner – with whose beautiful wife Julia (Naomi Watts) Ned shares a mutual attraction.
But the British colonial system and its Victorian English enforcers remain prejudiced against Australia’s working people, and the struggling Kelly family is no exception. When, in 1878, a bullying police officer is rebuffed by Ned’s younger sister Kate and targets the family for harassment, Ned and his mother are unjustly charged with attempted murder.
Ned is determined to avenge his family’s name and strike back against his people’s oppressors. While hiding in the bush, he forms a loyal Gang that includes his best friend and first lieutenant Joe Byrne (Orlando Bloom). A chance encounter with the police culminates in shots ringing out, and three officers are killed. The Kelly Gang is forced to go on the run. They blaze a trail through the Outback, robbing banks to fund themselves as well as to recover immigrants’ land deeds, and giving police the runaround. The Kelly Gang’s reputation as invincible outlaws grows, as does nationwide support from their immigrant countrymen.
To the masses, Ned is a hero. To lawmen and the establishment, he is the most wanted man in Australia. £8,000 is offered for his capture – at the time, the highest reward the world had known. When the authorities bring in the formidable Superintendent Francis Hare (Geoffrey Rush), and an army of police, with carte blanche to capture and/or kill the outlaws, Ned strategizes a risky showdown at the Glenrowan Inn. It is this event which will seal his fate – and his legend.
(73 votes)
2.
Today's hottest stars Heath Ledger, Orlando Bloom, and Naomi Watts join Academy Award winner Goeffrey Rush in an "absolutely superb" (Jeffrey Lyons, NBC-TV) action-packed adventure. Ned Kelly is an epic story of one man's struggle against corrupt lawmen to fight the oppression of his people and avenge his family's name. In the process he becomes the most wanted man the world has ever known-and a legendary hero.
(72 votes)
3.
Making no pretence to be factually accurate, Ned Kelly is at least an engaging action film with its heart in the right place. You don't need to be a student of Australian history to know that a picture detailing the life of the notorious folk hero and outlaw is not going to be a light-hearted romp through the outback. Injustice, persecution and unlawful imprisonment are the meat of his story, all presented here with not too much of a rose-tinted perspective amid generous doses of obligatory action.
Rebellious teenager Ned Kelly (Heath Ledger) is wrongfully imprisoned for stealing a horse and, when he returns to the bosom of his large Irish family, finds that the police won't let him go straight. After being accused of a crime he didn't commit, Kelly is left with no option but to go on the run. Accompanied by his gang (among them Orlando Bloom) he robs banks to survive and also to try and get the money together to free his family from prison. There is some considerable romanticising of the story and the man himself, due in part to Ledger's affable Robin Hood-esque working-class hero portrayal. Bloom is wide-eyed and daring as Kelly's main man, and Naomi Watts as his married mistress has the thankless task of breaking up some great action sequences to play the unnecessary love interest. --Kristen Bowditch
(65 votes)
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