Back in 1970, Tony Richardson’s “Ned Kelly” hit upon a neat idea: What if you got an honest-to-God rock star, Mick Jagger, to play Australia’s most notorious 19th-century folk hero? A neat idea is all it was, though, and the listless, unconfidently acted movie that resulted was duly forgotten. Nearly half a century later, however, Justin Kurzel’s thrilling new take on the legend gives Kelly some glam-rock swagger without any need for stunt casting. Lithe and volatile and recklessly stylized to the hilt, “True History of the Kelly Gang” has moves like Jagger, but a head still teeming with language and history. Adapted from Peter Carey’s Man Booker-winning 2000 novel, Kurzel’s roughhousing, ripely acted interpretation does full justice to the book’s rugged dirt-poetry vernacular and rich biographical particulars, while staging Kelly’s criminal rise and fall as a vision all its own: a wildly gyrating sensory assault of blood,...