Cast:  Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Baz Luhrmann’s latest movie, Australia has failed to pull off a David Lean style sprawling epic.

The film is a stimulating mix of romance, adventure and war, and is of old school, melodramatic, rather being classic.

The film dates back to 1939 Australia and stars Nicole Kidman as Lady Sarah Ashley, a courageous Brit widow, who tries to save her ranch from an evil cattle baron.

Her associates include a half caste boy, whom she befriends, as he is being victimized by the government's racial policies against Aborigines, and the handsome cowboy, played by Hugh Jackman, who drives her bulls to market.

The two hours of the film consists of campfires, cattle drives and mad stampedes and when it seems that the film is coming to an end a last act of a good, forty minutes, of a subplot of World War II is screened.

Australia tests the patience.

The romance between Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman's is sickly emotional. The film portrays Aborigines, as normally kind and mystical beings, but it makes it counter-productive to its message against racial prejudice.

Best average rating of the film Australia is two out of five. The film is ambitious but is imperfect and long.