Australia DVD, 2008

This Antipodean romantic epic combines the scope of Gone with the Wind, the melodrama of From Here to Eternity, and adds some of the high-tech spectacle of Pearl Harbour (2001) - exactly what you'd expect from the director of Moulin Rouge. Baz Luhrman's two-hour plus visual feast is sustained by a generous side of Australian beef in the shirtless, stubbled, sweating form of Hugh Jackman - who is just the kind of leading man Clark Gable might have become if only he had done more situps.

Jackman plays Drover, a smouldering cattle-hand who melts the heart of white-as-candlewax Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), newly arrived in Australia to pry her husband away from his cattle station. Ashley finds her husband murdered and her business theatened, but, beguiled by a mixed-race Aboriginal child, Nullah (Brandon Walters), and the challenge of life on the outback, she decides to drive the cattle to Darwin with the reluctant Drover in tow. Needless to say, the trio are beset by a rival rancher, the perils of the untamed Northern Territories, Australia's policy of forcibly placing Aboriginal children into institutions, not to mention the onset of WWII.

A cynicism bypass may be required, but with Oscar-nominated period costumes and a story which captures the sweep of history, if not the detail, it is difficult to argue when, after years of complaining that "they don't make 'em like that any more," someone finally does.

BK on 31st March 2009
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