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Animal Kingdom Review
[Thu 27/05/2010 02:46:28]
Animal Kingdom grips from its opening scene. Joshua ‘J' Cody (James Frecheville), 17, is staring vacantly at a TV game show while his mum snoozes on the couch next to him. Except that she's not snoozing; she has overdosed, fatally, on heroin, and her son doesn't quite know what to do next. So he calls his estranged grandma, Janine ‘Smurf' Cody (Jacki Weaver), who tells him to pack his bags, and gently, reassuringly invites him into the lions' den.
Janine lives with her three sons, J's uncles - the young one, Craig (Luke Ford), the nervous one, Darren (Sullivan Stapleton) and the ringleader, Andrew ‘Pope' Cody (Ben Mendelsohn). The Cody boys, together with Barry Brown (Joel Edgerton), are notorious armed robbers, under constant police surveillance. Crime isn't paying like it used to, and Barry wants to go straight, but Pope doesn't know any other life. A drug user with huge personality problems, Pope is the alpha male of the pack, and ashen-faced Mendelsohn plays him as a moral blank, a man staring into the abyss, jumping at shadows.
When one of their gang is killed by police, Pope's vengeance is swift and brutal, and J finds himself an accessory to murder. Enter Detective Senior Sergeant Nathan Leckie (Guy Pearce), who hopes to convince J to testify against the family. There's a difference between being strong, he explains to J, and the illusion of strength from being under the protection of the seemingly strong. J is no fool and realises that Uncle Pope would kill him at the slightest suspicion of grassing. What's a boy got to do to survive?
Drawn from the recent history of Melbourne's gangland, former Inside Film editor David Mîchod's debut feature outshines any crime thriller ever made in this country. Mîchod spent nine years honing his screenplay and it shows. Miraculously cliché-free, its every scene is surprising yet believable, building to an epic climax hinged on revelations about character. Mendelsohn is chilling, and newcomer James Frecheville is excellent as J, moving from inarticulate teen observer to trapped participant. Even better is Jacki Weaver as Smurf, the mother hen to this family of rotten eggs. Doting, chirpy and kissy-kissy, she smiles like a pixie but her eyes are as cold as a shark's. It's a magnificent performance by one of our national treasures.
Destined to be an international arthouse hit, this portrayal of power struggles in an underworld dynasty may be the closest thing we get to an Australian Godfather. Of course, while those smart capitalists the Corleones thrive and prosper, the small-time Codys are on the way out – but no species of carnivore surrenders to extinction without a fight. Nick Dent
