Pajiba September 10, 2019 MacKay lacks the electrifying menace or combustible bravado of his costars…so this story of an outlaw that outraged and inspired never really comes...
[A] stylish, intensely guttural and testosterone-soaked adaptation of Peter Carey’s Booker prizewinning novel that, at its most affecting and...
Vanity Fair April 23, 2020 The movie’s biggest surprise remains that it lacks any.
TIME Magazine April 16, 2020 What Kelly Gang lacks in historical accuracy it makes up for with brash punk energy.
Little White Lies February 26, 2020 This is a film which… mistakes flamboyant posturing and raw physicality for authentic performance.
TheWrap September 13, 2019 A bold, violent take on the 19th-century Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, a monumental tour through what one character calls "dirt and disappointment."
Daily Telegraph February 19, 2020 The result less resembles a conventional period piece than Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon with its fingers jammed in the plug socket.
Kurzel’s film doesn’t simply show us the shattered masculinity and class rage that fueled Kelly’s infamous late 19th-century crim...
Those who enjoy gritty, angry Westerns (especially those set in the Australian bush rather than along the American frontier) will find much here to...
RogerEbert.com April 24, 2020 This is myth-making, splattered in blood, scored with an electric guitar, and enacted with such brazen bigness that you wouldn’t be surprised...
New York Times April 23, 2020 Grant and Kurzel’s conceptions of the characters are so one-dimensional they seem to defeat the movie’s talented cast.
Chicago Tribune April 23, 2020 A tale of bodies and brutality, and of skin slick with blood spatter… It’s a story of nature versus nurture, of a boy who is forced to b...
How True History of the Kelly Gang broadens what we mean when we say the word "outlaw" is another step forward for Justin Kurzel in his cinematic i...
Independent February 28, 2020 Director Justin Kurzel… here returns to what he does best: sparse, violent and hallucinatory visions of mankind’s unchecked rage.
film.avclub.com September 8, 2019 True History Of The Kelly Gang (Grade: B) turns out to be an at-once straightforward and intriguingly unintuitive take on the life of the famous bu...
MacKay’s Kelly is as memorable as Montana. And that’s no lie.
Boston Globe April 23, 2020 [Kurzel] wants this "true history" to be a Rorschach blot of Australia’s national psychology, but he’s made something closer...
Rolling Stone April 23, 2020 Mick Jagger and Heath Ledger have previously played Australia’s 19th-century Robin Hood. But George MacKay tops them in this punk-rock take f...
Variety September 6, 2019 Lithe and volatile and recklessly stylized to the hilt, "True History of the Kelly Gang" has moves like Jagger, but a head still teeming with...
"True History of the Kelly Gang" may not be history as recorded by historians. But it’s history as recorded by a director with verve and...
Hollywood Reporter September 6, 2019 A raw rebel yell of a movie that combines visceral violence with a kind of delirious, scrappy poetry.
indieWire September 9, 2019 An immersive inquiry into how much truth even matters when parsing the lasting impact of a legend.
Empire Magazine February 24, 2020 A compelling, grubby outback Western revealing the ragged reality behind a folk hero. Terrific performances, incredible visuals, and a reasser...
While the emotional intensity and somewhat protracted narrative can be exhausting, in visual terms the film is a tour de force, steeped in blo...
It may have been possible to adapt Carey’s florid book for the screen, but Kurzel fails to bring the basics. He goes straight for the flouris...
Little White Lies September 13, 2019 It’s gritty and grimy, but surprisingly funny too, and cinematography superstar Ari Wegner does an excellent job in providing a real sen...
The Guardian March 1, 2020 The 19th-century Australian outlaw Ned Kelly is given a rock’n'roll makeover in Justin Kurzel’s swaggering, defiantly ahistorical...
But for all its real visual flair, it’s hard not to feel that the film misses something crucial about Kelly in the end – trading machism...
Irish Times February 28, 2020 Kurzel hits form again with a careering drama that harks back to bleary cinematic experiments of the early 1970s.
RogerEbert.com September 13, 2019 A shallow endeavor.
"True History of the Kelly Gang," for its part, strikes just the right balance of scary and crazy, and it subjects both to an impressive measure of...
Kurzel favors stylized images and the occasional anachronistic metal track to provoke a mood more than faithfully recreate history. And his ap...
The Guardian September 13, 2019 The problem of parsing Ned Kelly’s story is at the centre of this film. To watch it, you have to brace for impact.
Financial Times February 26, 2020 The film is as good as its word, this version of the Kelly legend based on the Booker Prize-winning novel by Peter Carey.
Inside Hook September 21, 2021 For his fourth feature, Australia’s prodigal son has returned to his visceral, lo-fi roots.
Sight & Sound October 30, 2019 Kurzel knows how to bring out the humanity in even the cruelest of characters.