No question I often make my movie selections based on their novelty appeal. This one has celebrity rocker Mick Jagger in the title role as an Australian outlaw, enough of an inducement for me to tune in on the Encore Western Channel. These things don't always go well, case in point - David Bowie as "The Man Who Fell to Earth". As far as Jagger's performance goes, it was OK, but that's about as much as I'll grant it. If it were an American film, any number of quality character actors could have filled in for Ned - Lee Van Cleef, Neville Brand, or if you want to go for the gusto, Klaus Kinski, even if he was German. I'm re-running the film in my head with any one of these actors and it works out OK. Aside from the dialog of course, it would have to be appropriately Australian/Irish.Story wise, one could make the case for an approximation of the James/Younger Gang of the American Wild West. Ned Kelly's mom (Clariss Kaye) is sentenced to jail for the shooting of a constable and with it, all hell breaks loose. Ned (Jagger) teams with his brothers and other local ranchers to take it to the authorities, but their ingenuity and firepower is never enough to overcome the powers that be. It's a familiar story.Quite apart from another reviewer's comments on this board, I thought Jagger's effectiveness was undermined by his looking like an Amish settler in the picture. He never appeared particularly threatening to me, or more correctly, his celebrity overcame his portrayal in the picture so that every time he appeared on screen I was thinking Rolling Stones instead of Ned Kelly, outlaw. I don't know how you can overcome that, the same was true in "Freejack" but that picture better suited his rocker style.What probably kept my interest more than the story alone was the frequent inclusion of songs throughout, including a solo by Jagger on 'The Wild Colonial Boy'. Waylon Jennings pops up a number of times, and his 'Shadow of the Gallows' was strangely evocative of Johnny Cash's early take on 'The Man Comes Around'. 'Blame it on The Kellys' was probably my favorite, and if I recall correctly, that one went on and on as Ned and his boys wreaked havoc throughout the countryside.Well I'm not sure how expansive this Australian Western genre might be, but if you really want to get down and dirty, you have to get your hands on a 2005 flick called "The Proposition". It too involves a family of brothers, and if you like your action gritty and violent, it's as visceral as they come. For my part, I'm left wondering what a guy like Mick Jagger thinks of his forays into film with the likes of "Ned Kelly".

This is a cult movie alright, although I'm pretty alone being a cultist here, this movie has all the elements of an ugly movie of the 70s (though i hear its huge in Australia).First of, trying to learn about Ned Kelly from watching this movie is just impossible, the story trail is as lose as the one in Dune and it jumps so fast from scene to scene that is unbelievable. In one scene a police officer swears not to tell the authorities that the he had an accident with the Kellys in which he was wounded, he was pretty happy and swearers not to tell, 1 second into the next scene Ma Kelly is standing for trial. What??, so he told them?, he what??. No one knows.the movie does those jump cuts a lot. and not only that, but you get to see some really weird scenes on the movie (such in the ending when both Kelly's brothers kill themselves in a rather artistic way). It all in the end gets explained if we consider that probably the entire cast and crew was on drugs, and not only them, but the caterers and the cleaning guys also.But that of course is not the main strenght of the movie, the main thing that this movie's got going-on is of course the horrible performance of Mick Jagger, who doesn't really act whatsoever if we consider it, but rather just stands around being the lead singer of the Rolling Stones than Ned Kelly.We get to see Mick: -as a drinker. -as a singer. -as a ladies man. -as a street fighting man.so we pretty much just see him being him, not one line is delivered correctly, but always as if Kelly was really angry because he ordered a latte and not a cappuccino or with a huge hangover from partying all night.The movie ends with Ned on his armor getting shot by the Brits, which is one of the memorable scenes of the movie, mainly because it actually seems to had been taken from a serious movie instead of a generic 70s movie.See this movie, its the funky version of Ned Kelly, but of course as all of them are Brits you just get to see a white cast. Kinda like the Stones music if we think about it.

This is truly one of the worst films I've seen in a very long time. It is not just the historical inaccuracy, it's the fact that accuracy is eschewed in favour of a very run of the mill story line. Waylon Jennings performing the soundtrack and Jagger in the lead role suggests a cheap and weak attempt to recreate Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, with Jennings' music not holding a candle to Dylan's and Jagger's acting not just being poorer than Kris Kristofferson's, but actually being some of the poorest I've ever seen.Who on earth thought it was a good plan to cast Mick Jagger in this film? He can't deliver lines, his accent is hopeless, during the fight scene, the supposed "hard man" stands like a wimp, something that the editor has attempted to deflect attention from but failed dismally. The supporting cast are basically insignificant, none of them being given enough screen time for us to develop much of a relationship with them, all frame space reserved for the "star."This film marks a low point in cinema that it would be hard to recreate, thank god.

Deadly dull junk, poorly made, with Jagger seemingly on heavy quaaludes during the entire production. Ugly to look at to make matters worse, and the actors all seem to affect Irish accents, rather than Australian as the real Ned Kelly was.If a Heath Ledger/Orlando Bloom remake can only improve things, then you know the original is awful.Postscript: if you loved "21 grams," then you're just the sort of pompous yuppie who goes for this sort of thing. In that case, by all means rent "Ned Kelly". "Six Feet Under" & "The West Wing" are bound to be a re-run once in a while, right?