Directed by David Michod
Animal Kingdom follows the misadventures of 17 year-old Josh Cody (James Frecheville) whose mother dies from a heroin overdose at the beginning of the film. He moves in with his cheery grandmother Janine ‘Smurf’ Cody (Jacki Weaver) from whom he has been estranged. She has three boys – Andrew (Ben Mendelsohn), Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) and Darren (Luke Ford). Along with Barry (Joel Edgerton), the boys hold up banks but the Melbourne police robbery squads are making their lives difficult. Not only are the police hunting them down, but they are dispensing their own rough justice.
When two police officers are murdered, senior police officer, Nathan Leckie (Guy Pierce), tries to get Josh on side and convince him to testify against his uncles. Unfortunately, when it is difficult to work out who is corrupt and who is not, it is an almost impossible task for Leckie to keep his prize witness safe. When the tensions between the family and the police reach a bloody peak, Josh finds himself at the centre of the revenge-driven plot. Even though director David Michod made a decision not to overplay the film’s violent scenes, the film is still quite disturbing; the most disturbing thing being that life seems to mean so little to some people.
However, the most interesting thing in this powerful Australian drama is how the power shifts, so that the viewer might even be watching a wildlife documentary as the characters jostle for supremacy. The least powerful becomes the most dispensable, the wounded becomes a liability, the old become complacent with the order of things and the young can learn skills at a rapid rate to take on their elders and defeat them. Most of all, characters who appear small in stature, easy-going and weak may in fact be the most powerful of all.
Lezly Herbert
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