Sadly Over-hyped

Purely Joyful Movie!

Good idea lost in the noise

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This is a great movie about a very interesting and successful bushranger and his cohorts. Hope the proposed trilogy will go ahead. Fantastic cinematography and beautiful scenery. We first watched this movie on a big screen at the back of Collector Hotel, which was brilliant.

Dreadful. Sceanery is nice though. Acting was appalling. The movie moved between comic, drama and utter silliness. I like Australian movies but this was a turkey. Costumes okay, script terrible. Actors had really nice teeth...... which is quite odd for the time period. Beards looked realistic, all I could think about was that least a few 'hipsters' were earning a few bucks!

This production is based on the true story of Ben Hall the infamous and legendary Australian bushranger. Unfortunately we don't see much of his exciting life, just the last 9 months. Sort of like watching "The Legend of Butch and Sundance" with the film starting in Bolivia but not as short as Monty Python's "Death of Mary, Queen of Scots." The film could have just as easily been titled, "The Death of Ben Hall" as it failed to show us why the man was legendary, just why he was dead.The Ben Hall (Jack Martin) in this film is dull and lifeless. He is melancholy about being separated from his son. Personalty is reserved exclusively for John Gilbert (Jamie Coffa) a flamboyant outlaw. Like so many low budget films the high budget past was "as read." It has all the components of an outlaw western, but knowing what they left out made the film a disappointment.Guide" F-word. Implied sex. Very brief nudity.

The movie is not about the whole of Ben Halls life but about the last couple of years of his life on the run, and ends with his death in 1865. There is therefore much of his life and earlier bushranging career that is not depicted, though at various points in the movie hints are given as to what went before and why. On-screen text says that by 1864 he was the most wanted man in the British Empire, and the Reward for his capture was the largest yet offered. The storyline is about Halls attempt to save himself by abandoning a life of crime and fleeing the country, a decision which leaves him awfully conflicted and in a desperate quandary : to leave he will need funds which he can only get by continuing the life of a Bushranger; to leave he will need to continue his association with the unstable and violent criminal John Gilbert, and reluctantly draw others into another Gang; to leave he will have to abandon the things that mean the most to him, his first but now estranged love Biddy, and his young son William. The filmmaker weaves together Halls doomed attempts to establish a relationship with his son, his fight to control his companions and acquire the necessary funds by highway robbery, and his struggle to evade capture long enough to escape to Queensland into an absolutely spellbinding movie that would be brilliant on any budget, but is even more so, because by comparison with most movies it was produced on the smell of an oily rag and with a cast of virtual unknowns. It helps of course to have the amazing backdrop of the Australian bush to set your movie in, and there are breathtaking shots of the gang riding in silhouette along the ridges against the setting sun, through crackling eucalypt forest echoing with the call of whip-birds and kookaburra, and across dry grass plains studded with rocky outcrops and ancient craggy gums – but it requires a kind of genius to capture it all so exquisitely on film. I wondered now and again if there weren't one too many of these gorgeous scenes of men on horseback galloping across a landscape that resembled a Tom Roberts oil painting, but certainly in Australia, people who love horses and have been in the bush can probably never get enough of that kind of beauty. But the movie is not just a grand visual feast, like a promo for Outback NSW. There is a terrific tension built up between police and the hunted, between the hunted and their increasingly wary supporters, there is passion and emotion that's not overdone and sugary, there's frivolity, dancing and music, betrayal, tragedy, horror, bravery, and through it all the brooding Ben Hall whose internal turmoil is barely contained. The scenes shot inside houses, police stations pubs and stores are all equally as rich and convincing. The opening sequence, where the face of the movies Ben Hall emerges from the famous photo of the real Ben Hall is mesmerising. Ben leaving his son and estranged wife for the final time is gut wrenching. Seeing panic-stricken John Dunn shoot a policeman and father of eight is shocking. John Glberts behaviour is often sickening.This is a terrific movie that succeeds on so many levels, and deserves country-wide distribution – I cant imagine any true-blue Aussie not giving it five stars.