Breaker Morant (1980)

"Shoot Straight, You Bastards!"

‘Breaker Morant: Australian Folk Hero…’

Between the early 70s and the late 80s, Australia produced a series of remarkable films, sometimes described as the Australian New Wave. I’ve yet to see many of these films- it’s a failing on my part which needs to be corrected, but the ones I have seen are superb: Nic Roeg’s Walkabout (1971)- one of my all-time favourite films (a teenage Jenny Agutter stranded in the Australian outback), Peter Weir’s haunting Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Weir’s moving, if flawed, Gallipoli (1981); My Brilliant Career (1979), starring Judy Davis and Sam Neill, the maritime thriller, Dead Calm (1989), also starring Neill- and, one of the best of the pick, Bruce Beresford’s Breaker Morant (1980).

‘The Bushveldt Carbineers- a dodgy, irregular unit of The British Army…’

Breaker Morant is set in South Africa during the Second Boer War (1899-1902); the story of three junior officers: an Englishman, Lt. Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant (Edward Woodward) and two Australians, Lt. Peter Handcock (Bryan Brown) and Lt. George Witton (Lewis Fitz-Gerald) of the Bushveldt Carbineers- a dodgy irregular unit of the British Army- court martialled by the British for war crimes, including the murder of nine Boer prisoners of war and three captured civilians (including a German missionary) in three separate incidents. It’s a contentious, controversial and much-debated subject. Despite his considerable Englishness, Harry Harbord ‘Breaker’ Morant has become an Australian Folk Hero- like Ned Kelly- with Lord Kitchener depicted, to some extent, as a Machiavellian hypocrite sacrificing Australia’s innocents- acting under orders- on the altar of diplomatic and political expediency.