Storyline
Set in northern Australia before World War II, an English aristocrat who inherits a sprawling ranch reluctantly pacts with a stock-man in order to protect her new property from a takeover plot. As the pair drive 2,000 head of cattle over unforgiving landscape, they experience the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by Japanese forces firsthand.
Directors
Cast
Jacek Koman, David Wenham, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Bruce Spence, Bill Hunter, Ben Mendelsohn, Nigel Harbach, Essie Davis, John Walton, John Jarratt, Barry Otto, Bryan Brown, David Gulpilil, David Ngoombujarra, Yuen Wah, Jack Thompson, Eddie Baroo, Mark Rathbone, Max Cullen, Shea Adams, Nathin Butler, Arthur Dignam, Sandy Gore, Kerry Walker, Ray Barrett, Jamal Sydney Bednarz, Tony Barry, Ursula Yovich, Brandon Walters, Matthew Whittet, Lillian Crombie, Haidee Gaudry, Jamie Gulpilil, Peter Gwynne, Jimmy Hong, Angus Pilakui, Adam McMonigal, Robin Queree, Crusoe Kurddal, Siena Larsson, Danielle Carey, Anton Monsted, William Gabriel, Chris Polzot
Trailer
Reviews
80
Defies all but the most cynical not to get carried away by the force of its grandiose imagery and storytelling.
70
Variety
Deliberately anachronistic in its heightened style of romance, villainy and destiny, the epic lays an Aussie accent on colorful motifs drawn from Hollywood Westerns, war films, love stories and socially conscious dramas. Some of it plays, some doesn't, and it is long.
67
Jackman, who stepped in after a cranky Russell Crowe walked away in a salary dispute, strikes just the right chord as a scruffy romantic hero.
60
Village Voice
The result is mostly a woodenly derivative melding of '40s maternal melodramas, oaters, and World War II actioners.
50
Jackman has musical-theater chops and knows how to sell material this ham-handed; Kidman isn't quite as deft. I've always admired her gumption in working so hard to overcome a certain temperamental tightness--but that tightness has now spread to her skin.
