Movie Review: The Legend of Ben Hall

We have a tendency in America to believe that our pop culture is the only culture to embrace our anti-heroes, those rugged criminals whose lives we romanticize into fantasy for reasons we can’t quite rationalize with what these men did. But rhapsodizing about the criminal as pseudo-hero is a truly worldwide phenomenon. The latest example of the worldwide nature of the celebration of anti-heroes comes from Australia with the story of criminal icon Ben Hall, the subject of the Bushranger epic The Legend of Ben Hall which is now available on DVD and On-Demand services in America.

Ben Hall (Jack Martin) was the quintessential Bushranger, a criminal but a criminal with a personal ethic. In the years since Ben Hall has been robbing stagecoaches with his band of criminal brothers, he never took a life. Ben may not exactly be noble, he is an unquestionably dangerous man committing real crimes, but his no murder stance, at the very least, render a criminal with scruples. Ben is haunted by the way in which his wife Biddy (Joanne Dobbin) left him for another man and took their child and he intends to take the boy back once he steals enough money for safe travel to America.

Joining Jack is the far more dangerous outlaw, John Gilbert (Jamie Coffa), whose best quality is his loyalty to Ben; it’s the only thing that keeps Gilbert from becoming an outright psychopath. Together, Ben and John recruit Jon Dunn (William Lee) and they begin a reign of terror on Australian banks that led the banks and the government to extreme measures to fight back. Those extreme measures eventually led to a moment of reckoning for a bloodthirsty army of thug law enforcers and the Australian military which compromised their ethics eventually to put an end to Ben Hall and his gang.

There are no real heroes in The Legend of Ben Hall but director Matthew Holmes does do a remarkable job of making his anti-heroes sympathetic. A scene in which Ben, John, and Jon attend a citywide dance in some remote outpost is a genuinely rousing good time, even as Ben and his gang took over the dance by force. This eventually leads to a wonderfully tense sequence between Ben and one of the less willing party goers when he escapes the dance hall to thwart the gang and Ben Hall is forced to compromise some of his ethics in favor of sending a dangerous message.

Jack Martin is a little too buff and ruggedly handsome to play an Outback Bushranger, even as his photo seems to match that of the real-life Ben Hall. Martin’s striking features and well-honed pecs and abs seem to indicate more work on a Bowflex than on a horse but that could just be my jealousy coming out, I wish I was that handsome. Coffa and Lee seem to fit the aesthetic a little better than Martin, though Martin has a history with his character having played Ben Hall in a previous short film that eventually became this film.

For a movie about Aussie Bushrangers, The Legend of Ben Hall is surprisingly engaging for a non-Aussie audience. With the look and feel of a classic American western, The Legend of Ben Hall can’t help but evoke memories of our own legendary outlaws roaming the west of America, criminals like Ben Hall with and without the emotional backstory or ethics that made Ben Hall at least a little bit worth rooting for.

We as an audience often find ourselves envying the freedom and power that comes from criminality. It’s part of the romance of the West, sleeping under the stars, taking what you need and being feared by those unable to attain your level of freedom. It’s a fantasy if an uncomfortable one from a moral and ethical standard. The Legend of Ben Hall quite smartly de-glamorizes the fantasy by portraying Ben’s failures with as much faithful detail as his cleverly schemed heists. Hall’s life is not romantic, it was dangerous and ended in controversial fashion when, despite not firing a single shot in his own defense, he was gunned down, shot 33 times in a criminal homicide that would be determined to be justifiable homicide despite all the evidence at hand.

The Legend of Ben Hall is compelling and rousing with a good cast and a strong hand in writer-director Matthew Holmes whose ongoing fascination with Hall, he also wrote and directed the short that led to the epic feature, leads to a fascinating if somewhat overlong and occasionally repetitive bit of historic adventure fiction. The Legend of Ben Hall is available on Blu-Ray, DVD and On-Demand on Tuesday, August 1st.