Australia Movie Review

AUSTRALIA
Character Analysis...

Neil Fletcher...

"....pride's not power.."

The role played by David Wenham works as a cattle station manager and also as Lady Sarah Ashley's husband's main driver. Fletcher was actually trying to gain control of Faraway Downs, so that Lesley 'King' Carney (Bryan Brown) can have a complete cattle monopoly in the Northern Territory. As two years passed, Fletcher kills Carney and frames it as a tragic accident, marries his daughter Catherine Carney, takes over Carney’s cattle empire, and then continues to menace Lady Sarah.

Firstly, Fletcher was pictured as an evil person in this movie. This was proven when he tries to manipulate Lady Sarah Ashley into selling the Faraway Downs to the Carney empire soon. One of the reasons that he claimed the windmill had not run in years. Only to be found that his effort was canceled out by Nullah who climbed up the tower and took out a pin, and the wheel sprang to life, turning on a faucet. Nullah yells that Fletcher lied. He got fired afterward.


Clever also another word to describe him. This was shown after King Carney ordered him to prevent Lady Sarah and Drover from driving the cattle to the docks to sell. One of the nights,
Fletcher and his group pour gasoline on some brush behind the cattle. They light a match, and the brush goes up in flames, creating a stampede. Everyone wakes up, and Drover realizes that the cattle are head towards the cliff. Later, Flynn and Nullah are closest to the front, so they take off for the cliff to try to round the cattle back towards the canyon.They make some progress, but Fletcher and his cronies have thought ahead. They lit another fire, cutting off a safe place, and spooking the cattle back towards the cliff. Fortunately, some incantations from Nullah somehow
stop the cattle.

Next, Neil Fletcher also can be considered as an irresponsible adult. This is because he is the actual father of Nullah, yet he didn't admit that and continues to threaten the so called creamy and a half-caste boy (Nullah). He didn't show any love towards his son, instead, he discriminate and blaming him as the source of his failures by the end of the story and even tried to shoot him only to know that a spear thrown by King George, paralyzed him and died on the scene.

Another one of his traits is that he has his goals or maybe in other meaning he is power greed, throughout out the whole story, he planned to gain control of Faraway Downs from Lady Sarah and do anything in his might to achieve his goals. Not only that, he also managed to take over the Carney empire that was by killing King Carney himself and claimed it was a tragic accident and married his beloved Catherine Carney. He soon to have all in his hands at the northern territory until the Japanese attacks that made him lose everything hat he had.

In my opinion, Neil Fletcher fits the protagonist character in this movie and his play should be a lesson to everyone else in this world. That's all that I can conclude, there is always moral values portrayed in these kind of characters that made a movie more interesting.

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