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Down underworld
Animal Kingdom
Directed by David Michôd
Certificate 15, 113 mins
UK release: 25 February
Reviewed by Michael Hering
ANIMAL KINGDOM is a gritty, in your face film about
life in the criminal underworld. It is set in Melbourne, Australia, at a
time when police corruption was running rampant and organised crime was
very much in the public eye. It tells the story of four brothers, career
criminals dealing in drugs and armed robbery, their mother, an extremely
protective and utterly ruthless matriarch (played brilliantly by Jacki
Weaver) and their nephew Josh (James Frecheville). He is in his last
year of school, trying to navigate the obstacles that are thrown at him
when he finds himself in the middle of a war between his uncle’s set-up
and the police armed robbery squad.
The storyline is wholly believable. There are no
Hollywood-style shootouts with fast action car chases and unrealistic
escape scenes. The beauty of the movie lies in the drama that unfolds as
each character is developed and more and more of their layers are
revealed. The film keeps you guessing until the end and the plot takes a
number of turns that emphasise both the darkness of the situation and
the intelligence of the writing.
Animal Kingdom is unflinchingly Australian and this
is no better displayed than by the brothers’ dry, sarcastic humour in
the face of what seems to be an impossible, no-win situation. Having
come after the incredibly popular Australian TV series, Underbelly –
based on the actual events of the Melbourne underworld war (1995-2004)
between two rival organised crime gangs – this fictional film leaves you
with the feeling that it is all too real and could easily have happened.
Although it starts off slowly, the pace of the movie
picks up fairly early on and gathers speed heading for the final
conclusion. The characters of the four brothers are developed well. The
eldest, Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), becomes more violent and out-of-control
as the war with the police unfolds. Barry, or Bazza (Joel Edgerton),
decides that he has had enough and is determined to find a way out and
start living a normal life. Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) starts falling
apart when the war begins and is clearly the most emotionally unstable
of the four, not least because of the copious quantities of cocaine that
he takes. Meanwhile, the youngest, Darren (Luke Ford) is often in two
minds about all that is happening around him. Against the background of
the escalation in violence, he struggles with the knowledge that he has
to choose sides, that there is no turning back.
Similarly, their nephew Josh, who is new to their
world, only having moved in with them after the death of his mother,
finds himself torn between siding with the police, on the one side, or
with the only family he has left. On top of that, he becomes more and
more aware of his growing feelings towards his girlfriend, who remains
close to him at the start of his family’s feud with the police and even
stands up for him against her own family when he has nowhere to stay.
Animal Kingdom is complex and gripping. You find
yourself empathising with Josh and his uncle Darren, knowing that they
are making decisions which they do not want to make and which are
forcing them further down the road to nowhere. The main police
character, Nathan Leckie, a detective (Guy Pearce), is a devoted family
man who likes to play everything by the book. He also empathises with
Josh, realising that he is in as much danger from his own police
colleagues as he is from his unhinged uncle Pope. The movie illustrates
how quickly bad decisions can ruin lives, how the lives of career
criminals are by no means glamorous and how, at the end of the day, they
are living in constant fear that it will all come undone. They live with
the undeniable truth that it almost always does, one way or another.
Animal Kingdom won the world cinema grand jury prize
at the Sundance Film Festival last year – as well as ten prizes from the
Australian Film Institute. It is a must-see movie, one of those few you
could see more than once and still thoroughly enjoy.
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