Grant’s script is based on the Booker Prize-winning 2001 novel by Peter Carey, a madly inventive chronicler of fictionalized Australian history whose unreliable narrators hold a surreal mirror up to the country’s past to reflect on its present. Kurzel reteams here with Shaun Grant, the screenwriter who helped establish him with his 2011 debut The Snowtown Murders - a real-life killing spree that was hard to watch in its unflinching brutality but announced a commanding stylistic talent. Those assets, along with the bold visual flourishes, the invigorating use of an unconventional score by the director’s brother Jed Kurzel and the thriller’s enveloping, almost other-worldly sense of timelessness should supply enough impact internationally to erase the memory of the filmmaker’s stumble with Assassin’s Creed. Then there’s a wonderfully chewy supporting turn from Russell Crowe as the bear-like outlaw who indoctrinates the initially reluctant young Ned into a life of anti-establishment crime, and fabulously louche work from Nicholas Hoult as the epitome of sneering English authority.
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