Do you have a video playback issues?
Please disable AdBlocker in your browser for our website.
Due to a high volume of active users and service overload, we had to decrease the quality of video streaming. Premium users remains with the highest video quality available. Sorry for the inconvinience it may cause. Donate to keep project running.
Ben Hall is drawn back into bushranging by the reappearance of his old friend John Gilbert. Reforming the gang, they soon become the most wanted men in Australian history.
Often the word "legend" in a film title can be a fairly good indicator that you're not in for a breezy frolic, but that still doesn't prepare you for the ponderously protracted slog that is "The Legend of Ben Hall."
There's a story here somewhere but I suspect the nub of it is at the beginning of Hall's bushranging career, rather than the end. Whatever the truth of it, Holmes is too tentative in his attempts to tease it out.
Holmes' unfocused screenplay makes clear that his subject was an honorable thief (Hall never took a life), but the writer-director never makes any of it matter.
This is far too long (half an hour could have easily been trimmed) and the actors aren't always up to it, and yet it's still worth persevering with, right down to the you-saw-it-coming, sub-Bonnie And Clyde ending.
The long-neglected tale of bushranger Ben Hall - there was an ABC TV series way back in 1975 - receives a pretty good going over in this impressive, ambitious, incident-packed feature from writer/director Matthew Holmes.
As portrayed by Jack Martin, the bushranger is an imposing figure, tall craggy, blue-eyed and charming when he wants to be. But his motivations, except for the fact he wants his son back, remain sketchy.
Writer/director Matthew Holmes steers and controls the film's tone with a single minded focus that serves the film well, appealing to the serious historian and invested film lover