First Hit: Long, some beautiful scenes put together but very little about how Australia came to be.
To be clear I like Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. However as Lady Sarah and Drover respectively they don’t combine only adequate acting to make a good film.
The scenes, at times are luscious and at other times the background mattes are too obvious. Kidman plays Sarah as a prudish hard nosed woman from England tolerating her husband’s fancy to have a cow ranch in Australia. She gets word that it is in trouble and her husband is dead. She goes to sell the land, take her money and go home.
But her compassionate nature arises through a “creamie”, a mixed aboriginal and white child, who continues to hide from the people who enforce the government’s policy of taking these kids away from their families and training them to be respectable citizens. She wants to help this child as she has none of her own.
As Drover, Jackman plays an unattached cattle driver who had an aboriginal wife who died so everyone else treats him badly. But because he is a competent cattle driver (hence the name) he is tolerated and respected at some level.
Of course these two personalities don’t hit it off at the beginning of the film but grow to love each other in the end.
Baz Luhrmann adds the complexity of the Japanese invasion of Australia hoping to drive epic compilations into this film and folks we’ve got a lot of story to tell and all 177 minutes are felt. The reality is that all the other stuff hides that this is a love story of two strong personalities. It isn’t about Australia it just takes place in Australia. Kidman is ok but it isn’t her best stuff. Jackman is easy and fun to watch from a rough and ready cowboy perspective. The boy is charming and there are some bright spots, but Luhrmann got in the way of making a film about Australia or there was never an intention of showcasing this wonderful country and its people.
Overall: This film is a fancy version of the John Wayne film The Cowboys with some added stuff about the Japanese invasion.