Epic down under

Big, busy and sometimes confused movie for a big continent | Sam Thielman

James Fisher/20th Century Fox

If you really want to, you can hate Baz Luhrmann's modest little $130 million art film Australia. You can scoff at the film's shaky logistics, at the miscasting of Nicole Kidman, and at the worryingly broad characters (yes, the Asian cook really is named Sing Song). Or you can enjoy the movie on its own terms—as a sort of cross between Far and Away and Uncle Tom's Cabin. Nobody will accuse Australia of being too cerebral, but its epic scope and swashbuckling heroics are just too bighearted to be disappointing.

Australia follows a cattle rancher's wife named Sarah Ashley across the outback as she salvages her murdered husband's business. She starts by firing crooked farmhand Neil Fletcher (David Wenham) for hitting a half-aboriginal boy named Nullah (Brandon Walters), driving the cattle herself, and pursuing a romance with widowed cattle herder Drover (Hugh Jackman), all under the watchful narration of Nullah himself.