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Saturday, June 3, 2023

NED KELLY (1970)

Australia’s own Billy the Kid legend, their Pop Culture outlaw of choice, was Edward (Ned) Kelly, his tale just as tamed & romanticized for popular consumption as The Kid’s.  This middling to fair pic, from brazenly uneven writer/director Tony Richardson (imaginatively lensed by Gerry Fisher if bizarrely fitted with faux folk songs from Shel Silverstein/sung by Waylon Jennings) got a bit of commercial push and notoriety for starting (or was it stopping?) Mick Jagger’s serious acting career.  (PERFORMANCE, out later this year, finished any talk.)  Irish by heritage (hence the confusing accent) and born into a fatherless family of horse thieves, Ned’s just been released from prison when his brother is getting hauled in on similar charges.  Their resistance, and a shooting, puts the brothers on the lam, along with a couple of sympathizers, all claiming Irish sovereignty (or is it simply Irish lager?) they fight off escalating swarms of cops, government agents, and military units, before their hideout is found and they’re firebombed into submission.  Bound if unbowed, Ned goes to the gallows with righteous indignation.  (BTW, no SPOILERS here, ‘The End’ is ‘The Start’ of the pic.)  Richardson tries to jazz up a story that feels secondhand, but his one chance to bring in something fresh was Jagger’s offbeat casting, and it dies aborning thru hairstyling and a beard that transforms the R&B frontman into a Quaker lad.  What could be more of a turnoff?  No doubt Jagger thought this all was part of making this no stunt but a serious acting statement.  But since he’s unconvincing at conveying emotion, the attempt, in spite of decent surroundings, wasted effort.

DOUBLE-BILL:  A slightly higher rated NED KELLY in 2003 with Heath Ledger, Orlando Bloom, Naomi Watts, Joel Edgerton & Geoffrey Rush (not seen here) sounds even more of a whitewash.

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