Ned is horrified by Harry’s hair trigger violence, eventually escaping to head back home, but not before inflicting a flesh wound on O’Neil, the officer’s privates lassoed by Power.Ī cut to the Union Jack accompanied by punk rock on the soundtrack announces Ned is now a man played by a wiry, wide eyed MacKay looking like Bauhaus’s Peter Murphy with Iggy Pop’s body. Ned is horrified, later finding the bright red gown and burning it.īut it is tough-as-nails Ellen who rules this roost and a rude awakening for the ever-loyal Ned that she has sold him to one of her lovers, Harry Power (Russell Crowe), who’s led them in an entertaining sing-along lewdly denouncing constables, to train as a bush ranger. Afterwards, O’Neil informs the young boy that he’s seen the father (Ben Corbett) who called him away from the peephole wearing a dress in town. We first meet the young lad (unlike Kelly, blonde and always clean shaven here) watching his mother Ellen servicing Sergeant O'Neil (Charlie Hunnam) in a shed, payment for his ignoring her moonshine business.

Director Justin Kurzel ('Macbeth,' 'Assassin's Creed') along with his “Snowtown” screenwriter Shaun Grant have refashioned the legend of Australia’s most notorious outlaw like a cross between Todd Haynes’s “Velvet Goldmine” and Gerald Kargl’s stylish 1983 Austrian serial killer movie “Angst.” Painting Ned Kelly (George MacKay, '1917') as a bisexual cross dresser in love with his mother (“The Babadook’s” Essie Davis) is certainly an unusual approach, but it is telling that the film works best during its first half, chronicling the events which formed the young Ned (Orlando Schwerdt).

Peter carey ned kelly