Cinema, Also Showing Dec. 2, 1946

The Overlanders (Rank; Universal-International) is an Australian horse opera that has documentary force. In 1942, when Australia looked every day for a Jap invasion, the Australians decided to scorch their earth. The Northern Territory, some 520,000 square miles of land containing only 5,000 people and a million head of cattle, began to burn its houses, shoot its bullocks and head south.

Based on fact, The Overlanders is a hard-riding yarn about a drover who refused to shoot 1,000 head of cattle, decided to "overland" them across 1,600 miles of forbidding mountains and desert. The storytelling, acting and incidental romancing are not quite...