The True History of the Kelly Gang

Movie Review

Call Ned Kelly a mama’s boy if you want. He might kill you for it, but it’s still true.

From his earliest days, Ned’s mother, Ellen, was the only constant in his life. “There ain’t nothing she wouldn’t do for her own,” he once wrote. And if that meant that she performed certain, shall we say, favors for the men who’d come and visit the family’s Australian homestead, so be it.

Ned’s father was around when the boy was younger. But when Ned learned that Dad dons dresses on occasion, it put a damper on their relationship. From that point on, Ned considered himself to be the man of the family.

But little Ned did have a male role model. Harry Power was a favorite guest at the Kelly homestead. He’d sing funny, nasty songs and tell funny, nasty jokes, and Ned liked the guy a lot—right up until Harry bought Ned from Ellen and forced the kid into a life of bloody crime.

Yep, Mom would do anything for her own … but a girl’s got to eat, too.

Here’s the thing about a life of crime, though. There’s not much future in it. Eventually, Ned and Harry went their separate ways: Australia’s constabulary made sure of it. And Ned—understandably a little miffed his mother sold him—stayed away from his kin for a good long while.

In time, the boy Ned became a man—a man following the straightish and fairly narrow path, but not above earning a little coin through bare-knuckle boxing tournaments. But the call of home, the call of mother, grew too strong to ignore. So he returned to the homestead, swearing to everyone who’d listen that he just wanted to be an honest farmer.

His family had other ideas. And eventually, they helped guide him to become Australia’s most notorious—and most beloved—criminal.

Positive Elements

Ned Kelly was a real, historical Australian who’s often painted as a kind of Robin Hood figure. And this movie—this wildly fictional “true story”—only muddies the waters around his character further. So perhaps it’s fitting that virtually every act of “goodness” we see here seems to come with some kind of a caveat.

For instance: When Ned was just a kid, he rescued a lad about his own age—fishing him out of a river before the kid drowned. Ned was, temporarily, a hero. The lad’s own mother was deeply grateful to Ned, so she stitched together a commemorative sash for him and offered to send Ned to school at her own expense. “All I ask is for your sanction,” the woman tells Ellen. But Ellen won’t give it, believing that the woman’s motives are less than pure. The Kellys are of Irish descent, and this Englishwoman is trying to “bleed our culture out” in the guise of education. “Only the Lord shall take my children away from me,” Ellen tells the woman. “Not no Englishwoman.”

We can laud the woman for offering to pay for Ned’s schooling, even if the offer was rebuffed. Or we can laud Ellen for wanting to protect her children from unwanted influences—even if she sells her kid to the worst of influences a few scenes later.

While folklore sometimes suggests that Ned was a rather gallant swashbuckler fighting against a corrupt and unfair system, this film’s dramatization of him is more complex and, in its own way, more tragic. The movie suggests that Ned loved his family. But that love, his family’s lawlessness and the unethical lawmen determined to bring them all down ultimately pushed him into a place from which he couldn’t escape.

Spiritual Elements

The Kellys and their cronies are nominally Christian, and likely Catholic. Ned and his mother recite the Lord’s Prayer when Ned’s just a boy. Later, we see Ned swear in a tiny army with a Bible as a central prop.

But Joe Byrne, one of Ned’s confederates, seems to see the truth. “You can fool the others into believing you’re Jesus Christ,” he says. “I know none of this is the work of God. You’re just a man on his way to be hung.”

Ned, writing his memoirs, says that it’s all true, adding, “May I burn in hell if I speak false.” The mother of a boy whom Ned rescues calls him “my angel sent by God.”

Sexual Content

OK, let’s deal with the dresses first.

As mentioned in the intro, Ned’s father (Red) cavorted in women’s garb, which Ned and his sister, Kate, discover (and burn). Cross-dressing emasculates Red in Ned’s eyes, and the two don’t speak much after that. When Ned returns home after several years away, he discovers that his brother, Dan, also wears women’s clothes quite often.

The dresses are more than just a weird sexual predilection, though. Red and Dan believe they’re following a hallowed tradition: An Irish group called the Sons of Sieve have leaned into anarchic mischief for generations while dressed in women’s clothes, and the Kelly men believe they’re holding to that custom. It serves a purpose, too, Dan claims: “If you wear a frock to a fight, they think you’re crazy,” he says. “And nothing scares a man like crazy.” (That rationale doesn’t explain why Dan also attends dances in frocks, but we’ll move on.) Eventually Ned and most of his closest compatriots fight in lacy and frilly gowns.

And we’re not done yet. Sexual fluidity seems to be one of the movie’s most obvious undercurrents. While Ned does get involved, and falls in love, with a young prostitute (we see her naked in one scene, revealing her backside and the side of her breast) and apparently conceives a child with her, his relationship with men is freighted with homoerotic undertones at times, too. Ned wrestles with Joe Byrne at times—sometimes when they’re mostly undressed—and they stroke one another’s faces and kiss one another’s foreheads. (It’s not completely clear that they’re in a sexual relationship, but the movie seems determined to suggest they could be.)

Ned later meets Constable Fitzpatrick, and they hang out in a well-appointed brothel where Fitzpatrick is completely naked except for a pair of lady’s stockings. (His bare legs obscure his privates.) He tells Ned that it’s fun to have sex while wearing a dress; when a Shetland pony noses his way into the scene, Fitzpatrick shoves the beast away saying, “Not again,” hinting at an act of bestiality. Fitzpatrick also works a deal with the Kelly family in order to be with Kate, Ned’s younger sister. (Fitzpatrick is, by the way, engaged.)

Ellen performs oral sex on another constable, and a spying Ned watches the encounter. Ellen and Ned’s future owner, Harry Power, exchange veiled sexual banter before he, too, spends the night. Ellen insults Ned’s father and his manhood. Ned’s father tries to display said manhood either to entice or provoke Ellen.

We see plenty of provocatively dressed prostitutes and hear about illegitimate children. Cleavage makes occasional but noticeable appearances. Ned is shirtless much of the time, and we see him (both as a child and as an adult) taking baths (from the chest up). Another scene implies masturbation.

Harry Power and a young Ned barge into a room where a constable and a prostitute are engaged in obvious sex. The woman leaves, leaving the constable completely naked and covering his privates with his hands. Which leads to …

Violent Content

… a very violent scene in which Harry Power ties a thick string around the man’s delicate parts (pulling him out of bed and yanking him about), slugs the guy in the face and then orders little Ned to shoot the guy’s penis off. Ned shoots the man’s leg instead, and we see a great deal of blood ooze from underneath the naked man’s hand.

We’re just getting started.

Harry guns down two people in cold blood, spraying a horrified Ned with blood. Later, Ned and his fledgling gang murder three police officers. (We watch one of them bleed out painfully, after which Ned cuts off one of the man’s ears as a souvenir.) Ned shoots a constable in the wrist after his mother coldcocks him with a shovel. A policeman threatens to shoot an infant. We see plenty of corpses, sometimes tied grotesquely to trees (and one which appears to have some sort of body part of his own stuffed in his mouth). A horse is shot dead. A young Ned kills a cow (offscreen) and drags a bloody leg back for his family to eat.

An older Ned participates in a very bloody bare-knuckle contest: His exposed torso is reddish-pink with his and the other man’s blood; and he punches and kicks his very injured opponent until the guy’s unconscious.

A man is hung, and the act drags on for a bit. As a boy, Ned is arrested and apparently beaten by police officers: His face is a mess of cuts and blood. Kelly trains his gang to wear metal armor, demonstrating the effectiveness with real bullets (which sometimes knock the wearer’s over anyway). Ned and his gang plan to derail a train and slaughter those inside. Ellen tries to bite off someone’s ear.

[Spoiler Warning] The film documents the scene for which perhaps the real Ned Kelly is best known: a police raid near the town of GlenRowan, where most of his gang was killed and Ned himself was captured—but not before donning metal armor and lumbering outside like a walking tank. The armor’s not perfect: He’s eventually brought down after getting shot in his unarmored legs. He and his fellows are bleeding profusely before this last stand. And after Ned’s brought down, he can see the building he and his gang were holed up in engulfed in a raging inferno.

Crude or Profane Language

There’s a lot of it: nearly 125 f-words, six s-words and a variety of other profanities, including “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “h—,” “crap,” “c–k,” “p—y” and the British profanity “bloody.” We also hear God’s and Jesus’ name misused, too.

But perhaps the movie’s most troubling language issue involves the c-word. Harry Power sings a song that repeats the word constables many, many times, emphasizing the syllable “const” as an allusion to the obscenity. Later, Ned performs his own rendition of the song, and the word’s no longer veiled at all. We hear it repeated nearly 20 times (and one or two times elsewhere).

Drug and Alcohol Content

Ned abstains from liquor, apparently, but few others do. We see plenty of drinking (wine and whiskey, mainly) and a bit of smoking, and Ned and Joe Byrne appear to get high from something. Ellen runs what seems to be, technically, a bar, even as she services other needs, too.

Other Negative Elements

Obviously, Ned and his family don’t have a lot of respect for the law. A woman spits on another woman. People steal everything from horses to boxes.

Conclusion

The True History of the Kelly Gang begins with an ironic disclaimer: “Nothing you’re about to see is [the] true … history of the Kelly gang.”

Sure, Ned Kelly was a real guy who killed people and was hung for his crimes and once dressed like a tank. But historians are pretty sure that he didn’t dress like a woman. The whole “Sons of Sieve” cross-dressing conceit is purely a creation from Peter Carey’s original 2001 book and this energetic-but-vapid film (directed by Justin Kurzel).

In fact, Doug Morrissey, who wrote a non-fiction book on the real Ned Kelly, loathed this film: His piece for Quadrant Online declared it was “The Silliest Ned Kelly Movie yet.” He writes:

Gender-bending and sexual promiscuousness weave their licentious way throughout Kurzel’s film. The dialogue is said to possess a “queer, witching-hour energy”. Costumes transcend period definition and Ned “in tight, androgynous silhouettes, discovers the enemy-startling powers of genderqueer battle garb”. Of course, none of this is true, beyond Kelly Gang members Dan Kelly and Steve Hart occasionally disguising themselves in women’s clothing to gather information on the movements of the police. The rest is Peter Carey fantasy with a bow to modern-day notions of queer sexuality.

The True History of the Kelly Gang goes beyond just silly. It’s utterly exhausting. The content here is so extreme, on basically every level we document here at Plugged In, that I felt like I needed to take my own vacation to Australia afterward—or, at least, to take a bath to wash the film away. Some have praised the film as giving Kelly a punk rock makeover. And to that I say, “And that’s a good thing?”

You certainly have to give the film credit for its boldness. But as Ned Kelly could tell you if he was alive today, Sometimes the wrong sort of bold can lead straight to the noose. While Mama Ellen Kelly might’ve been ultimately proud of her boy, and while some in Australia might call him a hero, the movie about him is a black-hearted thing, best left to history’s dustbin.