“Animal Kingdom” – (2010, Australia, 113 minutes – rated R)
“Do you know what the Bush is about?”
A key question both asked answered by Melbourne detective Nathan Leckie (Guy Pierce) as he tries to turn Joshua ‘J’ Cody (James Frecheville) into a witness against his own family.
Joshua fell in with them after his mother died of an overdose: grandmother Janine ‘smurf’ Cody and her sons Andrew ‘Pope’ a bank robber (Ben Mendelsohn), Craig a drug dealer (Sullivan Stapleton) and Darren (Luke Ford), who follows in the others’ footsteps.
Watch the trailer here:
Leckie himself has unsavory colleagues on the robbery squad, particularly detective Justin Norris (Anthony Hayes), a crooked cop.
“Animal Kingdom” is director David Michod’s first feature film, which he also wrote. There are several things about the film which make it work so well: first Michod’s screenplay, in terms of the dialogue, structure and plausibility. Michod wrote it by weaving true crime stories from 1980’s Melbourne, and as a result, some of the ‘incidents’ have a definite feel of realism.
The cast is an interesting mix with veteran Jacki Weaver who acted in one of my all time favorites, “Picnic at Hanging Rock”. Here she has the opportunity to explore a layered character, a calculating manipulator who has an almost sexual hold over her sons. Watch her actually convince det. Norris to put a hit on Joshua…
As to newcomer James Frecheville, he portrays Joshua as an emotionally inept (Michod’s terms) teenage boy in a man’s body. It’s a mature performance with keen notes such as the despair scene in a bathroom. While Leckie seeks to protect Joshua from getting in deeper with the Codys, he also intends to use him.
As to Andrew, he becomes more and more volatile and homicidal as the police close in.
He and Craig also use Joshua as they try to survive in Melbourne’s urban Bush. As to Joshua himself he will have to decide whether to eat or be eaten in this Darwinian underworld.
“Animal Kingdom” is one of those rare thrillers, with action which is realistic and an intelligent dialogue completely free of clichés. “It’s a crazy f…g world”. Famous last words.
“Animal Kingdom” gets five jellybeans.
“Rampage” – (2009, Canada/Germany, 85 minutes – rated R)
I expected this would be a more difficult one to review, somewhat like “the killer inside me” and “Wolf Creek”. The trailer hinted at the story of an unhinged young man named Bill Williamson going on a killing spree in a small Oregon town.
Watch the trailer here:
I at first thought of Williamson (Brendan Fletcher) as a sort of avatar of Travis Bickle, the protagonist of “Taxi Driver”. But where Bickle (Robert de Niro) despite his delusions actually tried to do some good, no matter how misguidedly, Williamson is just an angry little misanthrope. He is just mad at a world in which he can barely function, as he thinks himself superior to most everyone.
He also has a narcissistic strain: not unlike Bickle, he likes to look at himself in mirrors.
There really is nothing likeable about this loafer who still lives with his parents. Writer/director Uwe Boll said in a Q&A that Williamson has a point. There is none.
About ten minutes or so after he does go on his rampage, wearing body armor, automatic weapons, pistols and more, realism walked out of the theater.
First, it’s pretty clear given natural ambient lighting, that he set out in the late afternoon, and as things… progress, it appears to be earlier in the day.
Not great continuity there.
But the main problem is we are to believe he can somehow travel on foot and at times by car through a town, walking in and out of businesses killing people. Okay, his first act was to blow up the town’s police station with a radio-controlled van loaded with explosives (uh-huh). In the entire film he manages to take out another police car and directly engage five cops. I’d wager than within minutes of his destroying the police station, law enforcement from all surrounding counties would be converging on the town with enough hardware to leave maybe a toenail to be found.
The ending is utterly ridiculous as well. At least, Brendan Fletcher plays Williamson as an unpleasant loser, and the film doesn’t attempt to openly glorify him. But it comes close at times.
No beans for this clunker.
