Had the film been made in Hollywood, it would have surely been rewritten as the "historically [in]accurate story" of Jessie James or Billy the Kid, as few of the names of the legendary bushrangers of Australia have ever really managed to gain broad recognition in the country that thinks it is god's chosen land. Indeed, we only ever learned of Ned Kelly — generally regarded as the most famous of all bushrangers — because Mick Jagger once starred in a film about him, the flop that is Ned Kelly (1970 / trailer), a film that even Jagger has disowned.* Ditto with Mad Dog Morgan (1976 / trailer): had Dennis Hopper ([17 May 1936 – 29 May 2010] of Night Tide [1961 / trailer], Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 [1986 / trailer], Super Mario Bros. [1993 / trailer] and Red Rock West [1993] and so much more) not starred in the film, the name would probably still only make us think of nasty hangovers. In regard to Ben Hall, however, he was an unknown to us and, basically, we only bought the cut-out DVD because we were feeling in the mood for a western, and The Legend of Ben Hall was the only DVD in the cut-out bin that looked as if it would fit the bill.
* "The film was poorly received at its opening, and is still regarded as one of [director Toni] Richardson's least successful efforts. It was effectively disowned by Richardson and Jagger, neither of whom attended the London premiere. As late as 1980 Jagger claimed he had never seen the film. [Wikipedia]"
Trailer to
The Legend of Ben Hall:
Luckily, however, The Legend of Ben Hall wasn't made by a consortium in LaLa Land but was made in Australia, so we get the "true" tale of a bushranger instead of another retread of an American train robber or gunman. Moreover, the film was also made as a labor of love of the director and scriptwriter Matthew Holmes, who supposedly spent around ten years of research to write his supposedly historically accurate, two-hour & twenty-minute-long narrative, which is an expansion of his original, crowd-funded 40-minute short, The Last Days of Ben Hall (2014). "Historically accurate" is always one of those terms, like "honest Republican" or "Christian values", that leaves one's eyebrows furrowed, but who are we to argue about the truthiness of the documentation of yesteryear: we come from a land that currently swallows every word Trump babbles as if it were the honest gospel according to the bush of fire. (But then, America is burning.)
At the start of The Legend of Ben Hall, Ben (Jack Martin of The Mercy of Others [2024 / trailer]) is already an infamous bushranger and on the run, making his way — like some bushland stalker — to take his son Henry (Zane Ciarma) from his former wife Biddie (Joanne Dobbin), who now lives with her new alcoholic man, James Taylor (Nick Barry of Cannibal Suburbia [2008 / trailer] and Kerion [2014 / full film]). Short on cash, Ben is contemplating the possibility of fleeing to America when his old compatriot John Gilbert (an overacting and frightwigged Jamie Coffa) suddenly shows up — and soon, joined by the young John Dunne (a reserved William Lee of Mutt [2021 / trailer]), they be back to their criminal ways — purportedly to finance their departure.
Despite all the bullets that fly throughout the film, Ben is a "don't kill" man (in as much as a man who shoots everywhere and at everyone can claim to be "don't kill"), so he is less than pleased when the publicity-happy John and the freshly-popped-cherry John kill their respective singular onscreen victims. Crime and women and fun and games and dirt and grime and horses all eventually lead to a lot of heat on their trail, and with the passing of the Felons Apprehension Act — which allows anyone to kill them without warning at any time — looming , the time to leave the country is nigh. But despite the life of crime (it isn't mentioned in the movie, but "from 1863 to 1865, over 100 robberies are attributed to Hall and his various associates, making them some of the most prolific bushrangers in the period of bushranging in the colony") there doesn't seem to be enough money in their kitty to sail into the sunset...
As we mentioned, the landscape and landscape cinematography is fab, highlighting the beauty of nature when not reveling in its unkempt rawness. Most of the costumes and settings aren't too shabby either, though the almost-shrill Jamie Coffa is saddled with an atrocious frightwig, which occasionally destroys one's immersion in the world onscreen — but not as much as do the glaringly obvious glued-on sideburns sometimes worn by Jack Martin's Ben. (Really, some of the close-ups are cinematic sins.)
"True" or not, the story meanders is a bit, as life tends to, and Holmes cannot help but occasionally give his title character airs of decency where others might see differently, or simply disbelieve that he would care. Indeed, the revelation towards the end that Ben probably had enough cash all along buried at Goobang Creek sort of casts a pale on his supposed desire to leave Australia and his life of crime, and one really wonders whether so much blame for burning down that store can be placed on the goading of his and John's female companions.
The shootout scenes are a pleasant change of pace: gone is the almost miraculous perfect marksmanship, regardless of all the mayhem, displayed in the cinema shootouts in most westerns, replaced for the most part with chaotically wild ballistic exchanges in which luck alone brings someone to hit the side of a barn. (A far more realistic visualization of what a real shootout was probably like, particularly when on the run.) Still, Ben Hall comes across less as a bushranger that never [intentionally] shot a man than as a bushranger that just never managed to hit a man: intention was obviously there, but not ability.
In general, despite the occasional moments where one feels the facts could have probably been read differently — we-thinks, for example, that Mr. Hall could well have been a bushranger stalker — Hall is generally not presented as a noble man of finer stuff but, rather, as a Joe Schmoe that happened to become a famous bushranger. Jack Martin does a more than a serviceable job, despite his glued-on facial hair, presenting Ben as man of multiple moods and sides, who grows emotionally along the way, but not quickly enough to avoid a fate that one knows is coming even if one doesn't know the story. In regards to acting, his performance, and the understated performance of William Lee as John Dunn, keep the movie anchored. In turn, director Holmes has a marvelous eye for the pictorial, both the majestically expansive and the tightly intimate, and even manages to get the most out of his occasional slow-motion scenes.
The Legend of Ben Hall is hardly an undiscovered masterpiece, but on the whole it is a well-made example of a western, meat-pie or not. It offers little new, but manages to at least combine its ingredients well to make a usually satisfying if almost always predictable genre experience that, truth be told, might have been a bit more satisfying had it been 30 minutes shorter. In the end, the biggest flaws of The Legend of Ben Hall are arguably little more than the frightwig and fake sideburns. Watchable, the movie nevertheless is of the sort that one doesn't bother putting on pause when taking a pee break.*
* Going by the trailer, Matthew Holmes' latest feature film, Fear Below (2025 / trailer), might win the pee-pause contest.
The Death of Ben Hall
by
by
William Henry Ogilvie
Ben Hall was out on the Lachlan side
With a thousand pounds on his head,
A score of troopers were scattered wide,
And a hundred more were ready to ride
Wherever a rumour led.
They had followed his track from the Weddin' heights,
And north by the Weelong yards;
Through dazzling days and moonlit nights
They had sought him over their rifle sights,
With their hands on the trigger-guards.
The outlaw stole like a hunted fox,
Through the scrub and stunted heath
And peered like a hawk from his eyrie rocks
Through the waving boughs of the sapling box
On the troopers riding beneath.
His clothes were rent by the clutching thorn,
And his blistered feet were bare;
Ragged and torn, with his beard unshorn,
He hid in the woods like a beast forlorn,
With a padded path to his lair.
But every night when the white stars rose
He crossed by the Gunning Plain
To a stockman's hut where the Gunning flows,
And struck on the door three swift light blows,
And a hand unhooked the chain.
And the outlaw followed the lone path back
With food for another day;
And the kindly darkness covered his track,
And the shadows swallowed him deep and black,
Where the starlight melted away.
But his friend had read of the Big Reward,
And his soul was stirred with greed,
He fastened his door and window-board,
He saddled his horse and crossed the ford,
And spurred to the town at speed.
You may ride at a man's or a maid's behest
When honour or true love call.
And steel your heart to the worst or best,
But the ride that is taken on a traitor's quest,
Is the bitterest ride of all.
A hot wind blew from the Lachlan bank
And a curse on its shoulder came;
The pine trees frowned at him, rank on rank;
The sun on a gathering storm-cloud sank
And flushed his cheek with shame.
He reined at the Court, and the tale began
That the rifles alone should end;
Sergeant and trooper laid their plan
To draw the net on a hunted man
At the treacherous word of a friend.
False was the hand that raised the chain
And false was the whispered word:
"The troopers have turned to the south again,
You may dare to camp on the Gunning Plain,"
And the weary outlaw heard.
He walked from the hut but a quarter mile,
Where a clump of saplings stood,
In a sea of grass like a lonely isle;
And the moon came up in a little while
Like silver steeped in blood.
Ben Hall lay down on the dew-wet ground
By the side of his tiny fire;
And a night-breeze woke, and he heard no sound
As the troopers drew their cordon round —
And the traitor earned his hire.
And nothing they saw in the dim grey light,
But the little glow in the trees;
And they crouched in the tall cold grass all night,
Each one ready to shoot at sight,
With his rifle cocked on his knees.
When the shadows broke and the Dawn's white sword
Swung over the mountain wall,
And a little wind blew over the ford
A Sergeant sprang to his feet and roared:
"In the name of the Queen, Ben Hall."
Haggard, the outlaw leapt from his bed
With his lean arms held on high,
"Fire" and the word was scarcely said
When the mountains rang to a rain of lead
And the dawn went drifting by.
They kept their word and they paid his pay
Where a clean man's hand would shrink;
And that was the traitor's master-day,
As he stood by the bar on his homeward way,
And called on the crowd to drink.
He banned no creed and barred no class,
And he called to his friends by name
But the worst would shake his head and pass,
And none would drink from the blood-stained glass
And the goblet red with shame.
And I know when I hear the last grim call,
And my mortal hour is spent,
When the light is hid and the curtains fall
I would rather sleep with the dead Ben Hall
Than go where that traitor went.
Ben Hall was out on the Lachlan side
With a thousand pounds on his head,
A score of troopers were scattered wide,
And a hundred more were ready to ride
Wherever a rumour led.
They had followed his track from the Weddin' heights,
And north by the Weelong yards;
Through dazzling days and moonlit nights
They had sought him over their rifle sights,
With their hands on the trigger-guards.
The outlaw stole like a hunted fox,
Through the scrub and stunted heath
And peered like a hawk from his eyrie rocks
Through the waving boughs of the sapling box
On the troopers riding beneath.
His clothes were rent by the clutching thorn,
And his blistered feet were bare;
Ragged and torn, with his beard unshorn,
He hid in the woods like a beast forlorn,
With a padded path to his lair.
But every night when the white stars rose
He crossed by the Gunning Plain
To a stockman's hut where the Gunning flows,
And struck on the door three swift light blows,
And a hand unhooked the chain.
And the outlaw followed the lone path back
With food for another day;
And the kindly darkness covered his track,
And the shadows swallowed him deep and black,
Where the starlight melted away.
But his friend had read of the Big Reward,
And his soul was stirred with greed,
He fastened his door and window-board,
He saddled his horse and crossed the ford,
And spurred to the town at speed.
You may ride at a man's or a maid's behest
When honour or true love call.
And steel your heart to the worst or best,
But the ride that is taken on a traitor's quest,
Is the bitterest ride of all.
A hot wind blew from the Lachlan bank
And a curse on its shoulder came;
The pine trees frowned at him, rank on rank;
The sun on a gathering storm-cloud sank
And flushed his cheek with shame.
He reined at the Court, and the tale began
That the rifles alone should end;
Sergeant and trooper laid their plan
To draw the net on a hunted man
At the treacherous word of a friend.
False was the hand that raised the chain
And false was the whispered word:
"The troopers have turned to the south again,
You may dare to camp on the Gunning Plain,"
And the weary outlaw heard.
He walked from the hut but a quarter mile,
Where a clump of saplings stood,
In a sea of grass like a lonely isle;
And the moon came up in a little while
Like silver steeped in blood.
Ben Hall lay down on the dew-wet ground
By the side of his tiny fire;
And a night-breeze woke, and he heard no sound
As the troopers drew their cordon round —
And the traitor earned his hire.
And nothing they saw in the dim grey light,
But the little glow in the trees;
And they crouched in the tall cold grass all night,
Each one ready to shoot at sight,
With his rifle cocked on his knees.
When the shadows broke and the Dawn's white sword
Swung over the mountain wall,
And a little wind blew over the ford
A Sergeant sprang to his feet and roared:
"In the name of the Queen, Ben Hall."
Haggard, the outlaw leapt from his bed
With his lean arms held on high,
"Fire" and the word was scarcely said
When the mountains rang to a rain of lead
And the dawn went drifting by.
They kept their word and they paid his pay
Where a clean man's hand would shrink;
And that was the traitor's master-day,
As he stood by the bar on his homeward way,
And called on the crowd to drink.
He banned no creed and barred no class,
And he called to his friends by name
But the worst would shake his head and pass,
And none would drink from the blood-stained glass
And the goblet red with shame.
And I know when I hear the last grim call,
And my mortal hour is spent,
When the light is hid and the curtains fall
I would rather sleep with the dead Ben Hall
Than go where that traitor went.
And now,
a public service announcement from a wasted life:
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