(2004) In truth of fact, Ned Kelly, age 25, was hanged on November 11th, 1880, as an outlaw in Victoria, Australia. Nine years earlier the Irish son of a sheep thief was arrested for stealing a horse under dubious circumstances, according to director Gregor Jordan's romanticized portrayal of Ned Kelly (Heath Ledger) from Robert Drewe's novel, Our Sunshine.

Released with two other Irish larrikins, Joseph Byrne (Orlando Bloom) and Aaron Sherritt (Joel Edgerton), Ned returns home to his mother and younger siblings after three years in prison. The English Victorian policemen harass the Kellys, especially Officer Fitzgerald, seeking vengeance for Kate Kelly's refusing his advances, who after taking a beating from Dan Kelly (Laurence Kinlan) and his chum Steve Hart (Philip Baratini), accuses Ned of having shot him.

At the time Ned was elsewhere, wooing Julia Cook (Naomi Watts), who refuses to testify on Ned's behalf to clear him of the false charges because she's married with children: "I can't. I'd be disgraced."

Unable to apprehend Ned, the cops arrest his mother, incarcerating her for attempted murder. On the run with Dan, Joe, and Steve, Ned shoots Constable Lonigan dead and another officer (regretfully). Declared outlaws with permission for anyone to shoot them on sight, the Kelly gang rob a bank, burn mortgages, and in Robin Hood fashion share the wealth with fellow Irish selectors' sons.

Brought from South Africa to hunt down the four ruffians, Superintendent Francis Hare (Geoffrey Rush) employs intimidation and arrest of scores of Ned's Irish friends, offering a reward of £2,000 for each member of the gang; but there are no talkers or takers.

In reply as fair warning Ned sends a message, which Joe composes from dictation as Ned orates to citizens present during the second bank robbery, addressed to Premier Graham Berry of Victoria: "I seek revenge for the evil name given me and my relations."

In exchange for his freedom from imprisonment and return to his young sweetheart, Superintendent Hare requires that Sherritt become an informant. Narrowly escaping from the police's setting the bush aflame, the gang goes to the Cooks' station where Julia asks Ned what it would take for him to save himself and forfeit his friends: she would have to flee to Queensland with him, abandoning her children and husband.

With Ned's growing glorification and the colony's stability threatened, the authorities declare war on the band of bandits, who have killed three officers and robbed two banks. Joining a circus on the way to the inn at Glenrowan, Ned designs a plan to derail the train carrying a small army of policemen in pursuit of him and his three companions, remove the townspeople to safety, and then confront the surviving coppers by wearing crude armored suits. But another man, a schoolteacher named Curnow, foils his scheme.

In Australia, a land of prisoners and their guards, Ned Kelly became a hero of mythology (even as a lad, awarded the green-and-gold sash for saving a boy from drowning) in the eyes of the Irish and a villain to the English establishment.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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