adambatman82
Posts: 11156
Joined: 15/12/2005
From: Sheffield
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A modern day Australian crime saga, Animal Kingdom follows Joshua Cody, a young man taken in by his estranged grandmother following the death of his heroin addict mother. Introduced to a world revolving around crime, drugs and violence, Joshua spirals deeper and deeper into trouble. As the story unfolds, and the police become more heavily involved, Joshua is given the opportunity to break away from his family, finding the boy caught in between justice and relative affiliation.
A wavering inevitability overshadows the whole of the picture, itself informed by the conventions of the genre. We know from the likes of Scorsese that no one can be trusted, we know from Coppola of the bond between familial membership, and we know from Audiard that conventions are made to be broken. This inevitability is not only transcendentally felt by the viewer, but by the characters on screen. The inevitability of the situation unfolds from the films opening moments, and maintains a presence right through to the films brutal closing shot. Never is the “inevitability” angle played more effectively than in the “Night In The Life Of A Dead Cop” sequence which closes the first act of the film. Full to the brim with tension, and played in a manner akin to a scene from a horror movie, the execution of the sequence embodies the tone of the movie wholly.
Everyone is expendable in director David Michod’s fiction directorial debut. While its a difficult area to discuss without fear of spoiling, Michod has a similar attitude towards certain characters to that of Alfred Hitchcock… A terrifying murder involving heroin forms the crux of the picture, lending a genuinely gut wrenching spin to a truly memorable moment. The intricate, weaving narrative, in which nobody can be trusted, sees the protagonist and his audience placed in a nightmarish scenario, with seemingly no way out.
A strong ensemble cast carries the picture, with James Frecheville’s Joshua at the centre of the group. Shaped by those who surround him, Joshua is the Michael Corleone of this tale, perfectly in place to be molded into the vision that those around him deem fit. Guy Pearce does his best Commissioner Gordon impression, his noble police officer the only bastion of hope within the picture. Sullivan Stapleton’s Darren, a coke fuelled paranoiac offers an insight into what Joshua could become, if he’s lucky, with Uncle Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), a “worst possible scenario” of sorts future Joshua. The grand scheme behind Jacki Weaver’s Janine “Smurf” Cody, the families matriarch truly comes comes into her own in the final act of the film, her overprotective mother providing one of the great on-screen maternal monsters. With the cut of a frame Weaver bounces between baking Grandmother to criminal mastermind. Her recent Academy Award nomination is richly deserved.
Stylistically, while generally fine, Michod does have a tendency to overuse slow motion. Aside from this slight issue, Animal Kingdom has an authentic, confident air about it, aping nicely, and reflectively, the work that inspired it. Objective camerawork encourages the unknown that lies behind every cut and every corner, blocking the mentioned inevitably. Accompanied by an omnipresent rumbling reverb, the uneasiness extends far beyond the visual image. Accompanying this is an effective pseudo-operatic soundtrack. The sprawling nature of many of the true masterpieces of the crime drama genre is somewhat lacking too, with, if anything, the relatively fleeting running time of just under two hours not actually large enough to contain the ambition of the story.
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Animal Kingdom - 
) we are very proud to have this being labelled australian. 
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