Ned Kelly/The Missing/Broken Trail

Triple bill featuring three drama movies set in the latter part of the 19th Century. 'Ned Kelly' (2003) is a biopic of the notorious Australian outlaw and folk hero, played by Heath Ledger.

From a family of Irish immigrants in the Victoria area of Australia, Kelly has long been the target of a prejudiced police force.

Sentenced to three years in prison for theft, Kelly finds a job tending horses on a ranch when he is released.

But when Kelly falls foul of crooked policeman Fitzpatrick (Kiri Paramore), he finds himself on the run after being accused of a crime he didn't commit.

Together with his brothers, Kelly forms a bank-robbing gang and is pursued by bounty hunter Francis Hare (Geoffrey Rush), leading to a final stand where Kelly armours himself with steel plate, determined to go down in a blaze of glory. 'The Missing' (2003) is set in 1886 and stars Tommy Lee Jones as Samuel Jones, a wanderer who abandoned his family years before to travel with a band of Apaches in New Mexico.

Over the years, his conscience eats away at him and he finally resolves to return home.

But on arrival at the homestead, he finds his wife long dead and his grown-up daughter Maggie (Cate Blanchett) and her husband Brake (Aaron Eckhart) filled with bitterness about the past, unforgiving and unwelcoming.

Amid a tide of recriminations, Jones decides to leave the family.

But when a band of ruthless bandits ransacks the homestead, killing Maggie's husband and kidnapping her teenage daughter Lily (Evan Rachel Wood), he becomes Maggie's only hope.

Can he track down the bandits before they disappear with Lily into Mexico?

Finally, 'Broken Trail' (2006) is a two-part television drama starring Robert Duvall and Thomas Hayden Church.

The year is 1897. As Print Ritter (Duvall) and his estranged nephew Tom Harte (Church) travel the slow road to reconciliation, they reluctantly find themselves forced to care for five abused and abandoned Chinese girls while simultaneously attempting to deliver a herd of horses across the plains.

Soon confronted by a gang of malevolent kidnappers who intend to abduct the girls and use them for their own nefarious purposes, Print and Tom determine to keep their young charges out of harm's way while ensuring that their valuable delivery reaches its intended destination.