Australia (2008)

Release date: 2008-11-26
Country: UK|Australia|USA
Language: English|Aboriginal|Chinese|Japanese
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Production Co: Twentieth Century Fox, Bazmark Films, ScreenWest
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Romance, War, Western
Rating: 6.6/10
Length: 2h 45min

Storyline

In northern Australia at the beginning of World War II, an English aristocrat inherits a cattle station the size of Maryland. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn stock-man to drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor only months earlier.

Plot Keywords

prejudice, year 1942, year 1939, drink, running, fishing, fish, umbrella, dancing, drinking, drunkenness, punched in the face, japan, singer, singing, song, dead body, corpse, dance, dancer

Short Review

"Australia" is a shameless-and shamelessly entertaining-pastiche. It works because Luhrmann, a true believer in movie-movie magic, stamps it all with the force of his own extravagant, generous personality.