At 2 hours, 35 minutes, "Australia" has room for both a cattle drive movie and a war movie, with a romantic drama thrown into the mix to tie both parts together.

Nicole Kidman plays British aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley, who appears in northern Australia in 1939 to visit her property, a huge ranch called Faraway Downs, and decide whether to sell it to devious local cattle magnate King Carney.

Hugh Jackman plays the Drover, who is recruited to take Lady Sarah to Faraway Downs. The Drover's regular job is to, well, drove, as they say, "move cattle from A to B." Naturally, these two get into ferocious arguments on the trip, and then, of course, eventually fall in love. Once at Faraway Downs, Lady Sarah is informed by her bookkeeper that her station manager has been cheating her. She also comes across young Nullah (completely charming newcomer Brandon Walters), the film's narrator, a half-Aboriginal, half-white child.

Soon enough, nothing will do but that a ragtag bunch of riders led by the Drover and Lady Sarah must attempt to drive 1,500 head of cattle to a waiting British ship in Darwin.

Although dramatic events continue nonstop to the end, "Australia" manages to calm down from its frenetic opening minutes as Kidman and Jackman sink smoothly into the kind of major star romance we've been waiting for.