Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) has spent most of her life in England accumulating possessions and having others bend to her strong will. With no children, her marriage has sundered with her husband who is in Australia living on a cattle ranch. Convinced that he is having an affair, Lady Sarah impulsively heads for Darwin, Australia. When she arrives at the cattle station, Faraway Downs, she discovers that her husband has been murdered. His manager Neil Fletcher (David Wenham) claims that the killer is King George (David Gulpilil), an aboriginal who lives alone in the Outback and has special powers. This same angry man wants to send Nullah (Brandon Walters), a part-aboriginal child who lives on the place, to a mission run by the church. Lady Sarah fires Wenham when he allows the police to come for the boy; while trying to hide, Nullah's mother dies.

Although Sarah had planned to sell Faraway Downs, now she decides to save it. To do so, they have to get 1500 head of cattle across northern Australia to Darwin to sell them to the army. King Carney (Bryan Brown) owns all of the cattle ranches in the territory except this one, and he is determined to bring about its downfall, thus securing his monopoly for supplying beef to the troops. Fletcher has been working for him secretly and now he is ordered to sabotage the drive to Darwin.

Lady Sarah hires The Drover (Hugh Jackman) to lead the trek through rugged landscape. He is a fiercely independent man who has earned the ire of his fellow Australians by marrying an aboriginal who died of tuberculosis because she was not allowed in a hospital. At first, The Drover clashes with Sarah, seeing her as nothing more than a spoiled and selfish aristocrat who has no respect for people or places outside her own limited world of privilege. But when as part of the deal, she volunteers to join the cattle drive, he realizes that there is more to her than he first thought. Also joining them on the arduous journey across northern Australia are Kipling Flynn (Jack Thompson), the ranch's alcoholic accountant; Magarri (David Ngoombujarra) and Goolaj (Angus Pilakui), the Drover's trusted stockmen; Bandy Legs (Lillian Crombie), the housemaid; and Sing Song (Wah Yuen), the ranch's cook. By the time they leave, Lady Sarah has forged a strong emotional bond with the orphaned Nullah. She has enchanted him with a story about the Wizard of Oz and even sung "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to him, which becomes very meaningful to both of them later in their adventures together. A final thematic strand in Australia involves the bombing of the city of Darwin in February 1942 by the same Japanese planes that attacked Pearl Harbor.

Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Moulin Rouge) directs this old-fashioned adventure story that is filled with many magic moments of high drama and emotional catharsis. A native of Australia, he has made a spellbinding movie which celebrates the awesome landscape of his homeland with the top-drawer cinematography of Mandy Walker.

The director's personal and professional motto, "A life lived in fear is a life half lived," appears on the screen in the opening credits and admirably sums up the spirit of the two lead characters, who open themselves to the changes propelled by their unfolding relationship. In the course of the drama, Lady Sarah is transformed from an arrogant and uncaring aristocrat into a lover and nurturing woman who finds her own special place in a wild land. The Drover starts out as the archetypal stockman who savors the solitude of the wilderness and discovers that love is a much richer and more fulfilling experience than being on your own. In their relationship with Nullah, both characters are challenged to protect and then let go of the boy when King George calls him into the desert for his initiation through a walkabout.

We commend Luhrmann for making the terrible and dehumanizing treatment of the aboriginals in Australian history such a large part of this story. Everything is structured around the commentary of Nullah as the narrator, especially his understanding of the importance of storytelling to create a sense of belonging and the meaning of the aboriginal dreamtime, a spiritual perspective that says the land is sung into existence. (It's no wonder the boy connects with the dreaming in The Wizard of Oz.) Other children like Nullah, half-aboriginal and half-Caucasian, were removed from their homes and placed in the care of missionaries who were charged with getting them to give up their indigenous ways. Recently the Austraian government formally apologized to this "Stolen Generation" for what was done to them. Nullah's dominant role in the story of Australia feels like another kind of amends. By the film's end, we know and deeply feel why Lady Sarah and the Drover love him and the big beautiful country they all can call home together.

Special DVD features include deleted scenes.