“Australia: The Movie” – A romantic action-adventure set in northern “Australia” prior to World War II, the movie “Australia” centers on an English aristocrat (Nicole Kidman) who inherits a ranch the size of Maryland. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattle driver (Hugh Jackman of the upcoming ) to drive 2000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country’s most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin, “Australia” by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor only months earlier. With his new film, “Australia,” Baz Luhrmann (who catapulted Nicole Kidman to fame in “Moulin Rouge”) painted on a vast canvas, and created a cinematic experience that brings together romance, drama, adventure and spectacle.
Perhaps Baz Luhrmann will have better luck with Nicole Kidman in this epic than Ron Howard did with her in the dreadful “Far And Away.” Although, Wild About Movies grade for “Australia” isn’t much better than the grade Tim Nasson, publisher of Wild About Movies, gave “Far And Away” over a decade ago.
