{"id":13911,"date":"2020-04-23T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=13911"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:19:19","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:19:19","slug":"true-history-kelly-gang-reviewe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/true-history-kelly-gang-reviewe\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: True History of the Kelly Gang<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Justin Kurzel\u2019s True History of the Kelly Gang <\/em>opens with a title insisting, \u201cNothing you\u2019re about to see is true,\u201d even though \u201ctrue history\u201d is right there in the title; moments later, in a voice-over of the memoir he\u2019s writing for his child, the protagonist announces what he\u2019s written shall \u201ccontain no single lie.\u201d So it\u2019s clear from the opening minutes that although the subject of Kurzel\u2019s film is Ned Kelly, the notorious Australian outlaw, what it\u2019s really about<\/em> is the very idea of \u201ctruth,\u201d and the inherent contradictions of claiming to tell it. Kelly\u2019s story has been told before, in books and paintings and murder ballads and in several previous films; if you\u2019d like some idea of his cultural cache, the two most noteworthy of those films cast Mick Jagger and Heath Ledger in the role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Kurzel\u2019s film doesn\u2019t feel loaded down with all that cultural baggage; it has the ephemeral quality of family legends, of offhand stories that become more elaborate and grotesque with each new telling. The blood-soaked mythos of Ned Kelly originate in the Australian Bush in the late 19th century, where the young man was surrounded by so much everyday brutality and unapologetic crime that when he finally tumbled into a life of crime himself, it sort of seemed like an inevitability. (One of the neat tricks of Shaun Grant\u2019s screenplay, adapted from Peter Carey\u2019s novel, is how it carefully situates the character into the general hedonism of the time and place without making excuses for him.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThat\u2019s the business, mate,\u201d his first teacher informs him. \u201cThat\u2019s what we do.\u201d Yet Ned Kelly takes it further, even than the (to put it mildly) colorful personalities that surround him; he crosses his criminal activities with a theatrical flamboyance and sense of nihilism that feels closer, by the third act, to full-blown madness. George MacKay (from 1917<\/em>), who plays the role, doesn\u2019t quite pull it off; he gets the character\u2019s early hesitancy and later insanity, but he blows through the transition. It\u2019s a two-part performance that needs a few steps in the middle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he\u2019s chilling in those final scenes, and the supporting cast is absurdly good. Essie Davis, so tremendous in The Babadook<\/em>, is unsettling here as another mother who\u2019s a bit of a piece of work; Jojo Rabbit<\/em>\u2019s Thomasin McKenzie, in the film\u2019s other important female role, is terrific (as usual). We also find Russell Crowe scurrying ever so closer to his natural, feral state: as a 21st century Orson Welles, rotund and extravagant, his folksy charm belying blood colder than ice water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And as many a story of criminals does, True History<\/em> gives us a \u201crespectable\u201d authority figure that is far more loathsome and reprehensible than the antihero, and thus lets the viewer off the hook for feeling empathy for the one that\u2019s labeled the criminal. In this case, that\u2019s Constable Fitzpatrick, brought to rather chilling life by Nicholas Hoult with the very specific sneer and gait of a man who\u2019s used to doing whatever he likes, with no consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is director Kurzel\u2019s first film since the unfortunate Assassin\u2019s Creed<\/em>, and it plays, in many ways, like a course correction for that big-budget studio video game adaptation. This is the opposite: a proudly provincial and personal, idiosyncratic and uncomfortable work of art. The filmmaking crackles; Ari Wegner\u2019s camera glides over those vast Outback landscapes, and editor Nick Fenton keeps finding clever ways to sneak from one scene into the next. (The creeping, mischievous score is by Kurzel\u2019s brother Jed.) The style is flashy, but it fits; too often such flair distances, but here, somehow it immerses. It probably helps that the violence is so brutal and unforgiving. Kurzel has a way of framing and cutting these shoot-outs and attacks that leans into their messiness and uncertainty, and as a result, they\u2019re genuinely startling \u2013 neither fun nor thrilling, just scary as hell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And they\u2019re accumulating to something. Midway through, before Kelly takes that turn, he is unable to pull the trigger on the lawman, and his mother bellows to the heavens, \u201cARE THERE NO MEN OF SUBSTANCE IN THIS GODFORSAKEN COUNTRY??\u201d It\u2019s a dramatic gesture, yet one that speaks, with crystalline clarity, to the psychology of so many crime films, and so much of criminal life as well. And thus, by the time True History of the Kelly Gang<\/em>, and Ned Kelly himself, comes to its bitter end, there\u2019s nothing romantic or glamorous about it; it seems doomed to happen eventually, the doomsday conclusion of a life that\u2019s bloody and painful and ultimately pointless. It makes for riveting viewing, though. \"\"\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

B+<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

“True History of the Kelly Gang” is out Friday on demand.<\/em>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justin Kurzel\u2019s True History of the Kelly Gang opens with a title insisting, \u201cNothing you\u2019re about to see is true,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":13914,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[340,1381],"tags":[1098,162],"class_list":["post-13911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-movies","tag-movie-review","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/531"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13911"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22851,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13911\/revisions\/22851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}