‘True History of the Kelly Gang’ and its punk rock Ned Kelly | movie review

True History of the Kelly Gang is a fictional punk rock western about the Australian bushranger Ned Kelly and his gang of outlaws

“Nothing you're about to see is true.” That's the cheeky title card that starts True History of the Kelly Gang (available on VOD April 24). And for a movie about an Australian bushranger — the equivalent of an American outlaw — known for his brutality and violence over several years in the 1870s, it's a surprising start. However, director Justin Kurzel remains steadfast in his portrayal of this anti-hero (or pure villain depending on how you look at it) throughout the film and gives the story a punk rock patina that feels particularly apt to tell this version of Kelly's story.

The movie, which is based on Peter Carey's 2000 novel of the same name, portrays Kelly (played by 1917-breakout George Mackay) and his gang as the fearsome, gun-totting rebels that they're notoriously known as. However, Kurzel infuses them with punk rock energy that includes having them go into battle wearing dresses to strike fear in their enemies. Plus, it makes the homoerotic energy between the members of the gang and with their primary foe even more compelling.

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The movie is split into three sections: boy, man, and monitor. In boy, a young Ned Kelly (Orlando Schwerdt) comes of age in the Australian bush with his mother Ellen (Essie Davis), a hardened Irish transplant, who is regularly harassed for sexual favors by Sergeant O'Neill (Charlie Hunnam), one of many toxic male figures in Ned's life. His disdain for his alcoholic father and care for his mother is Oedipal in nature. It's just another point in his childhood that explains his brute and violent nature as an adult. 

However, no one affects him more than the old, grizzled bushranger Harry Power (Russell Crowe) who becomes his mentor as a favor to his mother. He experiences horrors and violence that no child should have to witness. 

The first act's visual flair, including striking cinematography by Ari Wegner that captures the desolation of the Australian outback and the distinctly modern stylistic sensibilities that Kurzel is attracted to in his period pieces, dunks us in the movie's semi-fictional world that this Ned Kelly occupies. 

The first half of the movie is far from typical, but it feels more like a traditional biopic. When we make the shift to the adult Ned Kelly all hell breaks loose. Kurzel delivers an expressionistic blur of sound and light that makes the already chaotic story disorienting, and, most importantly, unrelenting. However, it's his foe that makes it most compelling. 

After Oscar-worthy character turns in Mad Max: Fury Road and The Favourite, Nicholas Hoult gets to dig his teeth into the meaty and campy Constable Fitzpatrick — a cartoon-ish mustache-twirling villain (without the ‘stache). In one stunning scene across from Kelly's love interest Mary (Jojo Rabbit‘s Thomasin McKenzie), he employs an interrogation tactic involving a baby that feels so punk it could only live in this world. 

True History of the Kelly Gang is greater than the sum of its parts. Watching it is a hypnotic experience that will be polarizing to mainstream audiences — it's oddly meta for an outlaw who was similarly polarizing. Still, it's impossible to not be affected by it in some way after its final frame. Kurzel takes a huge swing, whether or not he hits depends on you. Either way, the movie feels like a baseball bat to the head — in the best way.