The next grandiose Buz Luhrmann project ("Romeo and Juliet", "Moulin Rouge!"), whose shooting was developed into the most dimensioned event in the history of the Australian cinema.
It has a typically adventure plot: guile and love with an Australian colour against a background to the oncoming World War II and Japanese bombardments. An English aristocrat inherits a large station in an Australian remote. She hires a courageous and sex appeal cattle drover, in order to help her to cope with this new task. A fantastic, admirable, chilling, charismatic rival, station manager, embodied by universal David Wenham, machinates against them in the hope to pocket a property of the new owner.
The audience and critics appreciated a new work of Baz ambiguously. Somebody praised it to high heaven of "Gone With the Wind" - others proclaimed it as a set of boring stereotypes.
In the main buzz of different voices only one question could be discuss seriously: "When will Wenham, who has been doing a first-class job for a long time, get his own Hollywood film???"
Cast:
Nicole Kidman ... Lady Sarah Ashley
Hugh Jackman ...Drover
David Wenham ... Neil Fletcher
Bryan Brown ... King Carney
Jack Thompson ... Kipling Flynn
David Gulpilil ...King George
Brandon Walters ... Nullah
David Ngoombujarra ... Magarri
Ben Mendelsohn ...Captain Dutton
Essie Davis ...Katherine Carney
Barry Otto ...Administrator Allsop
Ursula Yovich ... Daisy
Lillian Crombie ...Bandy Legs
and the others...
2008