Rating: 
Summary: An important story that needs to reach a large audience
Review: Watching movies like this is never easy. It is a period in Australian history that needs to be told and openly discussed. There are many books written on the "Stolen Generation" at the moment, and because people just don't read like they need to, the movie is an excellent source of information. It has hopefully opened the door to an issue that still needs addressing. The Australian government refuses to apologize for this ugly time in history. We can only hope that history never repeats.
This is an excellent movie with an astonishing group of young aboriginal "actors." It is heart wrenching and, at times, difficult to understand how this can go on in a civilized society.
As an Australian living in the U.S. for the past 13 years I would just like to say "SORRY!" In the truest, purest form of the word - Sorry!
Rating: 
Summary: Not as good as the hype made it sound
Review: I have to say first of all that I enjoyed watching the film--as a fictionalized historical documentary, it works well. The scenery is amazing, the music (sounds, more like it) by Peter Gabriel is very nice, the camera work is good, and the acting decent, but there's really no story here at all. No characters change or learn anything, nobody learns any of the life lessons that drive fiction and drama. Things here just happen, one thing after another, like a plain narrative, and it leaves an empty feeling after the film is over.
The actors didn't have much to work with, it seems, and their performances show it--I agree with the reviewer who says that they seem to be caricatures. Almost all of the white people are prejudiced, unfeeling bigots, and all of the aborigines are subservient, passive people who depend on the handouts from the whites. I don't know if that's historically accurate, but it is somewhat painful to watch.As a historical lesson about the depths to which people in power can sink when they're convinced of their own genetic "superiority," I would highly recommend this film. As a movie, a story that compels the viewer and helps us to learn more about life, I wouldn't recommend it at all--there's simply no story here.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but Lazy Film Making
Review: Poor character development ultimately makes this a mediocre film. Nice story. Will pull the heartstrings in places. The cinematography is absolutely wonderful. Unfortunately, this film is marred by almost cartoon character development. The roles are so stereotypical that at times the movie seems a spoof. All the white characters are made to be cold, heartless, arrogant; while all the aboriginal characters are wise and caring. Shame, for this makes the movie come off so preachy and smarmy. Add to that Branagh's almost lifeless performance. Obviously he mailed this one in. Worth renting, but not a compelling movie by any means.
Rating:
Summary: Rabbit Proof Fence: One of the best movies of the year......
Review: This is a powerful movie about three aboriginal girls who are captured by the Australian Public Guardian's Office. I had to see this film twice, the same night. Australia, at one time in their history, had laws that captured children who were known as "half-caste," biracial children (one parent was white and one black) and through a process of what I understood to be racial re-engineering (have the biracial child would at some point intermarry with a caucasin) the offspring would be more caucasin. And this process would continue the cycle of reproducing the caucasin race in Australia. Remaining objective, I only have this to say: During those times, a deep and uncontrollable human sickness existed in certain minds..... I have been to Australia, several times to visit, and did take notice how the Aboriginals are somewhat excluded by white Australians. It is a terrible way to live and treat others who can trace their family roots before the arrival of the first English. But it also reveals the true identity of some people. It, I am sure, had to do with the belief in a racial superiority complex and a belief in uplifting the "uncivilized people." It reminds me of Rudyard Kiplings, The White Man's Burden notion of conquering lands and christianizing the natives to uplift civilizations. I would recommend this movie for the following: Australian history, regarding Aboriginal biracial children; to better understand what happened to this particular group of children; how this impacted their respected families; how, unfortunately, these children and families were exploited by one of the worst forms of legal repression and oppression (Aboriginal Act), to name one act, I am sure, among others. It is an educational film and deserves a wider audience. I would strongly recommend this film. Many thanks to the film producers...........
Rating:
Summary: A Celebration of the Tenacious Human Spirit
Review: Director Phillip Noyce has succeeded in creating a cinematic version of the true book about the 'racial cleansing' of the Australian Aborigines that took part in the first half of the 20th Century. The Australian government subsidized campsites to where half caste Aboriginal girls would be sent to breed with white men and thus diminish the ethnic qualities of the 'backward natives'. In three genrations the half castes could produce dilution of the 'blackness' of their people by creating half castes > camaroons > octaroons who would have at least the physical characteristics of whites. This horid bit of history is brought to light by director Noyce in a sophisticated, straight forward, very tender rendering of the escape of three sisters by following the course of the rabbit-proof fence extending from their displacemnet camp in Northern Australia to their home 1500 miles to the South. Most of the film dwells on the odyssey of Molly, Gracie, and Daisy as they stalwartly defy desert, hunger, fear and the trackers to reach their home. Noyce wisely uses three inordinately fine young Aboriginal girls to play the key roles. The evil incarnate Kenneth Branaugh summarizes the Australian government plan, and the remainder of the cast is uniformly excellent. Photographed in a tone that suggests the bleak wildness of the Australian desert, this little film is a monument to the indefatigable spirit and soul of the Aborigines, and as such this film stands as an important document in the studies about human rights. Beautifull made with touching simplicity, RABBIT-PROOF FENCE is a film that will enhance your knowledge while nurturing your spirit. Highly Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Please see this movie
Review: This movie provides the experience that most of us hope for in theaters these days, yet hardly ever find. The moving story of three aboriginal girls will take you to the depths of human sorrow and the heights of individual power and emotion to overcome challenges.
The music of Peter Gabriel will take you on a journey often deplete of dialogue and into a world where sound and scenery can tell a story itself. Seeing this movie will hardly change your life, but for two hours you will experience a story that will forever change the way you view the world and human emotion.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the darker chapters in Australian history.....
Review: another chapter to add on to an atrociously confounding litany of poor insights on the part of unfortunately misguided, benign- in-intention world demagogues (we wish we could hop into a time machine and give all the buggers a right royal 'kick in the arse', don't we?). That said, this is not a film strictly about 'That Evil Racist', although it is a testament to Branaugh's thespian talent that the man doesn't come off reeking of that despicable label. Nary a false note in this exquisitely realised film. One of the few films regarding racial 'misunderstandings' (too light a word?), which eschews the 'monority of the week' tag it could effortlessly have settled for. For the most part, this deceptively slight film is markedly restrained, with director Noyce eliciting brave performances from his untrained leads. Granted, a poorly executed, sappy reunifiation scene between mother and daughters does, unfortunately, drain and unjustly cheapen some of the resonance held within the staggering final shot. Then again, it is based on a book by the protagonists' daughter, the most availably irrefutable outlook on 'what really happened'. Single irk aside, the simple, linear narrative trajectory should, strictly speaking, have lapsed (read: degenerated) into an empty, soporific morality tale or outraged, absurdly overwrought, vacuous polemic. It is heartening to suspect that there are a miniscule number of racially infused 'genre films' being made that can have a gratifying (but not gratuitous) emotional (dare I say 'uplifting', do not be put off by the word.... just this once) effect on an audience. Two minor key but worthy efforts from Philip 'Patriot Games' Noyce in quick succession? (the other being 'The Quiet American', based on a Graham Greene novel dating from the late fifties, which attempts to 'symbolically' lay bare the antecedents of the Vietnam War) Hmmm. Maybe the Antipodian has embarked on a twelve film rehabilitation programme. Note: I am not an expert (or even dilletante, for that matter) in Australian history. I can not, as some people have, deliver judgement on the macro-inclusiveness/ factual efficacy problem of this films content. If anyone feels that it is not to be trusted, please site 'the facts' as they are/ seem to you, with references so we may see that you're not a mere soapbox 'spewer of caustic vitriol' from some arbitrary place in the world. Unqualified opinions are cheap.
Rating:
Summary: Great film making
Review: This 98 minute film seems to be over in less than 60. Phillip Noyce does a wonderful job of capturing
the Australian desert country and gets superb performances from his three young 'stars'. It is not solely for the 'bleeding heart club' who of course will dote on it but seems to me to be an honest attempt at portraying cultural misunderstanding and the determination of the individual to choose what is meaningful for themselves. The aboriginal girls win this round in Noyce's account & the footage of the actual protagonists to end the film leave the impression that I believe Noyce wants to achieve.
Before one scorns what appears to be the abyssmal ignorance of the white interlopers into Australian culture, the almost successful genocide perpertrated in the Americas should be thoroughly considered and digested. Tne mistakes made in
Australia were not based on greed and hatred but on an arrogance that is universal.
This is an honest film which hopefully will linger and enlighten.
Rating:
Summary: A fictional film that doesn't tell the whole story.
Review: It is a pity that some people see a fictional account of a story and make judgements. Yes,illegitimate Aboriginal children living in poverty were taken from single mothers and put up for adoption,and this also happened to white children of single mothers. This was the way it was then in Australia and around the world. There were very few single mothers in the 1930's. It needs to be remembered that in the Aboriginal culture incest was and is part of their culture going back 40,000 years. In fact many Aboriginal men have the very same DNA due to the inbreeding of the culture.If a child was found to not have a father,living in poverty and in danger of being sexually molested,then was it not reasonable for that child to be rescued? Recently(and this is a true story),in 2002 a young Aboriginal girl living in a West Australian Aboriginal settlement committed suicide after being sexually molested. Some "politically correct" and patronising white people had the nerve to say and I quote-"we shouldn't worry about incest as it is a normal part of the Aboriginal culture" unquote. She wasn't "stolen generation" and they won't be making a film about her.
Rating:
Summary: The Patient Crime Against Humanity
Review: This movie is one of the greatest pieces of film-making I have ever seen. Philip Noyce's handling of the untrained young actors Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sainsbury and Laura Monoghan who played Molly, Daisy and Gracie respectively, and his light touch on the plot are truly spectacular. This film has an emotional intensity and an intimate scale which makes the grandstanding by other "socially conscious" film makers seem mawkish or banal by comparison. The performances of the actors is wonderful, especially Sampi and one hopes that this will be a turning point for three-dimensional aboriginal ensemble actors in motion pictures (although of course, this is Hollywood in action so any prospect of long-term social benefit has to be taken with an Uluru-sized grain of salt). As a record of what happened during the 60 plus year period (1909 ' early 1970s) when the Australian government carried out its policy of forcible relocation of part-Aboriginal children in order to "lighten the race" into extinction, this film is devastating in its impact. Readers who are interested can get a pretty good introduction to the issues by going to the Rabbit Proof Fence website. I'd like to add a couple of things here to the points that have already been made about the film. First of all, one of the strongest points of the movie is that the villains of the piece (in particular Kenneth Branagh's A. O. Neville) were totally convinced of the rightness of their cause and the subhumanity of Aboriginal people. Writing in the early teens, one of Neville's fellow proponents of child removal wrote "I would not hesitate to separate any half-caste from its Aboriginal mother, no matter how frantic momentary grief might be at the time. They soon forget their offspring." This same luminary noted that Aboriginal women were "prostitutes at heart" and that all Aboriginal people were "dirty, filthy [and] immoral". It should be pointed out that similar viewpoints were held towards the urban poor during this time period in all European countries, and their white colonies. Social Darwinist thinkers cast these groups along with Jews, Slavs, blacks, Asians and Natives of any kind as human trash to be eternal servants to the master race or victims of the march of progress. Secondly, on top of the forcible destruction of aboriginal families, the film also raises the issue of the sexual exploitation of young aboriginal women by white men. One of the most heartbreaking scenes in the movie for me was when Mavis (played by Deborah Mailman), a "graduate" of Neville's school who is the servant and sex slave of a white farming family begs the girls to stay with her: "If you're here, he won't come back". Mavis represents the implicit fate of many of the young girls taken from their families. These young women were a convenient and powerless source of domestic labor for settler families to recreate the master-servant power dynamic that Australians had supposedly rejected. Interestingly, a similar fate awaited some of the British evacuee children who were sent to live in Australia during World War 2. The last thing I want to note about the film is that the real Molly (shown with her sister at the end of the film) felt that the film should have been about the greater tragedy of her life: ten years after she escaped from Moore River, she was subsequently recaptured with her own two daughters, she managed to escape again with the younger one (Annabelle) but was forced to leave the other (Doris Pilkington Garimara, who became the author of the book on which the movie is based) behind. Molly did not see Doris again for 25 years. Annabelle was taken again when she was brought in for treatment for an eye infection a year later in 1942. To this day, 60 years later, Molly has received no contact from her youngest daughter.
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