Baz Luhrmann movies are a long time coming it has been 7 1⁄2 years since Moulin Rouge! but once they arrive, they tell and show you the story in a bravura rush. This hurtling, enthralling mix of Australian history and Hollywood fantasy links the destinies of a half-caste Aboriginal boy (Brandon Walters), the prim Englishwoman (Nicole Kidman) who owns the ranch where he lives and the rough-hewn Aussie (Hugh Jackman) she engages to drive her cattle to market. The year is 1939, and Luhrmann's cultural touchstones are that year's two most mythic films: the panoramic love story Gone With the Wind and the homesick fable The Wizard of Oz. It's also a Down Under western, with an evil land baron (Bryan Brown) and his even scurvier heir (David Wenham), a cattle stampede and a literal cliff hanger. But the heart of Australia goes to the "stolen generation" mixed-race kids whom do-gooder whites abducted and put in mission schools to (as an official says in the film) "breed the black out of them" and Walters is superb as their questing, affecting face. A high-speed ride over vast, forbidding terrain, this is the rare film that in visual and emotional scope lives up to the word epic. 11/26