The making of a boy into a man (and a man of some magnitude, too), as it was done in the Australian High Country in the 1880s. Peripheral figures all have been carved out with well-used cookie cutters: loony old gold prospector (Kirk Douglas, false-bearded and wigged, peglegged, and strapped with dialogue like "There's more to life than death" and "It's a hard country, makes for hard men"), tyrannical rancher (Kirk Douglas again, cleaned up), feisty young feminist (the fetching Sigrid Thornton), a pair of ratty, ne'er-do-well ranchhands, and a rebel stallion running as fast and as free as the wind despite reaching an age that figures to be somewhere in the late teens. The various adventures and intrigues are similarly familiar: a rescue from a mountain ledge, a dark secret harbored by two estranged brothers (Kirk Douglas and Kirk Douglas), and so on. Director George Miller, not the George Miller of Mad Max and Road Warrior renown, always has good ideas when the action heats up, such as the moment when the young hero spurs his horse full-tilt down a sixty-degree slope in the climactic chase, but the opportunities for such moments come along too seldom. And the overall aura of the thing is not that of an elemental, larger-than-life folk legend, as some of the slow-motion, the freeze-frames, and the florid scenic effects seem to aspire to, but rather that of a straight-forward and somewhat bland children's tale. Actual, certifiable children, it should be said, will probably be delighted with it. Tom Burlinson, Jack Thompson. (1982) — Duncan Shepherd
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