Not remotely compelling. Impossible to care about the fate of any of the characters. Way too long. Nudity and foul language aplenty are a transparent attempt to appear edgy. Much of the dialogue seems to think it's so deep and so profound, but it's utter nonsense. The final third in particular enters silly video game territory removing any semblance of investment in the story that somehow could have scraped through.

As my family knew the Kelly's (mainly Dan) I can say that this is far from the truth. Good style and well acted but the story is absolute trash. They were bushrangers.The Kelly gang never wore dresses, that's not scary or surprising as the movie says, the British would have just shot them and laughed more at seeing blokes in dresses. Ned never kissed teachers or spooned Joe in a tent, the last stand was at the Glenrowan Pub with the towns people that were celebrating with the Kelly gang. I've been to Glenrowan, the pub and the train tracks, and seen photos from back then and this movie isn't close. Even small things like giving Ned a mullet is wrong, the guy never looked like that. Looks like they went to the trouble of shooting this at the Melbourne Gaol but they didn't use the place where Ned was actually hung. Not sure why this movie was made when the TRUE STORY is so much better and more interesting. Not sure what the hell Hollywood is doing with history but I'm glad Ned isn't alive to see this crap.

absolute rubbish complete absolute rubbish

Jed Kurzel's proposal is a risky move. There is in this true-untrue story of Ned Kelly, a representation of the inevitability of violence if violence is what it is always around. But this violence, associated with masculinity, suffers from gender identity (thieves dressed as women), as a radical confrontation against that masculinity. The film is a western with Kelly child (the most successful part) and goes punk with Kelly adult, unleashing the rebellious character of the protagonist.

The true story? I'm not sure. It was a pretty good film though and shot through in a style I wasn't expecting.