Animal Kingdom Released 25 February 2011 Director David Michôd Starring James Frecheville, Ben Mendelsohn, Sullivan Stapleton, Guy Pearce, Luke Ford, Jacki Weaver, Joel Edgerton, Dan Wyllie Writer(s) David Michôd Producer(s) Liz Watts Origin Australia Running Time 117 minutes Genre Crime, thriller Rating 15

91

A dark tale of dysfunctional family.

Melbourne is often not seen as the most interesting Australian city by prospective Irish backpackers. It’s meant to be nice but a bit quiet and dull. It might come as a surprise to them then that the city has one of the worst organised crime problems in Australia. Chopper, the film that made Eric Bana a star, was based on an underworld figure in Melbourne and Underbelly, the award-winning TV series, is based on the gang wars there in the 1990s. Animal Kingdom is also loosely based on real-life events, the Walsh Street shooting of two police officers in 1988.

The story begins with Joshua (Frecheville) a tall, but dull-minded teenager looking on blankly as his mother overdoses on heroin. Not knowing what to do, he rings his grandmother (Weaver) and she takes him into her home with his four uncles. He knows his uncles are all career criminals specialising in armed robbery. There’s the kindly Baz (Edgerton), the hyper Craig (Stapleton) and Darren (Ford) who’s barely older than Joshua and is more of a cousin than an uncle. The scariest by far though is Uncle Andrew (Mendelsohn), who is on the run because the Armed Robbery Squad have marked him down to be shot. The squad is being disbanded and is out of control preferring to shoot known armed robbers rather than risk waiting for due process.

So, Joshua plunged into a household gripped by fear and tension and it soon gets worse when one of the family is suddenly and brutally murdered by the police. Desperate for payback, Andrew organises a revenge attack on the police. Joshua is pulled in for questioning about the attack and now he’s under serious pressure from both the police and the family.

Animal Kingdom is not an easy watch in any respect. There’s a constant edginess throughout and the excellent, unsettling score by Antony Partos considerably adds to the tension. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve an audience though, especially as the performances from the ensemble cast are uniformly excellent. Guy Pearce lends his star power to the project as the one decent police officer in the story but it’s some of the lesser-known actors who really stand out. Ben Mendelsohn is terrific as Andrew, a pure study of bland, unreasoning malevolence. His mere presence in a scene is terrifying, as you simply don’t know what he’ll do next. It’s a quiet, unshowy performance and all the more effective for it.

Jacki Weaver is also superb as the family matriarch. Outwardly she may look like a nice ‘glamorous granny’ but she reveals herself as being more vicious that her sons with whom she has a vaguely incestuous relationship. It’s a chilling performance that is truly disturbing. James Frecheville was picked out of five hundred boys in open auditions for the central role of Joshua and he looks to have a bright future. Initially Joshua could be dismissed as a near idiot but he builds the character slowly but believably, as he has to learn to adapt to his new environment to survive.

This is the debut feature from writer-director David Michôd, marking him down as someone to watch out for and it won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance film festival. It is a dark but enthralling film that takes an iron grip from the start and never lets go. There are some moments of gallows humour, but not many, as it doesn’t let you off the hook with such moments of relief like other crime films. It’s a journey laced with dread and imposing doom but Michôd and the cast handle the subject matter with such skill that they keep you watching regardless.

One of the finest Australian films ever and potentially one of the films of the year, it stays with you long after viewing it, even though you may prefer if it didn’t!

- Jim O’Connor