review for Kangaroo on AllMovie

Lewis Milestone had a knack for shooting difficult to film stories involving actors working and living in adverse conditions and getting great work out of them -- witness All Quiet on the Western Front, A Walk in the Sun, Halls of Montezuma, and Pork Chop Hill. Kangaroo, although it isn't a war movie, is of a piece with them, shot entirely in Sydney and in the Flinders Ranges, which looks to be some of the roughest country in South Australia, and he not only got great work out of his cast, but wove together a fine, exciting drama. Peter Lawford is the big surprise here, turning in a far grittier kind of performance than he was known for in the role of a two-bit grifter who discovers his better nature; he's matched by Richard Boone as a daring yet totally larcenous and utterly amoral villain; and they're surrounded by Finlay Currie, Maureen O'Hara, and Chips Rafferty doing their usual excellent work, and all in Technicolor. There's not much more to say about the relatively simple story, except that the Australian setting gives it added allure, recalling such earlier works in a vaguely similar vein as The Overlanders.