Ani­mal Kingdom

Rel­a­tive­ly infre­quent­ly a film emerges, seem­ing­ly from nowhere, and stakes a claim to be con­sid­ered a mod­ern clas­sic. Ani­mal King­dom, a pul­sat­ing account of Australia’s con­tem­po­rary crim­i­nal land­scape from first-time direc­tor David Michôd, belongs in this category.

Armed rob­ber Andrew ​‘Pope’ Cody (Ben Mendel­sohn, for whom the part was writ­ten) is in hid­ing from a gang of rene­gade detec­tives who want him dead. His busi­ness part­ner, Baz (Joel Edger­ton), wants out, recog­nis­ing that their days of old-school ban­dit­ry are over.

Pope’s younger broth­er, the volatile Craig (Sul­li­van Sta­ple­ton), is mak­ing a for­tune in the drugs trade – the true cash cow of the mod­ern crim­i­nal fra­ter­ni­ty – while the youngest Cody broth­er, Dar­ren (Luke Ford), naive­ly nav­i­gates his way through the Mel­bourne underworld.

Fol­low­ing the death of his hero­in-addict­ed moth­er, the Codys’ estranged nephew, J (new­com­er James Frecheville, hold­ing his own against a cast of vet­er­ans), is wel­comed into the fam­i­ly, presided over by his dot­ing, decep­tive­ly sun­ny grand­moth­er Janine (vet­er­an actress Jac­ki Weaver). Ensconced in a den of sav­age crim­i­nals, J suc­cumbs to the Cody lifestyle but soon finds him­self at the cen­tre of a cold-blood­ed revenge plot between the fam­i­ly and the police.

One senior cop, Nathan Leck­ie (Guy Pearce), becomes J’s sole ally, lur­ing him into the police fold with a mix­ture of kind­ness and empa­thy, and then shep­herd­ing the teenag­er towards tes­ti­mo­ny through a com­plex mine­field of wit­ness pro­tec­tion, cor­rupt cops, slip­pery lawyers and a para­noid and venge­ful family.

Evolv­ing over a nine-year peri­od and result­ing from Syd­ney born writer/​director Michôd’s fas­ci­na­tion with the illic­it land­scape of Mel­bourne, Ani­mal King­dom looks at a sub­stra­ta of soci­ety that oper­ates below what we under­stand to be moral and cor­rect. A film that has a lot to say about vio­lence and the effects of grow­ing up around it, Michôd effec­tive­ly uses J as our tour guide to an era on the brink of cri­sis and collapse.

Deter­mined­ly authen­tic and nat­u­ral­is­tic (nat­ur­al light is per­va­sive), Michôd’s deci­sion to avoid over­play­ing the vio­lence and his aver­sion to car­toon blood­baths is par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive. Ani­mal King­dom is a film in which the threat of bru­tal­i­ty is ever- present, lurk­ing omi­nous­ly, con­stant­ly threat­en­ing to explode.

The direc­tor has con­fessed to a desire to make a sprawl­ing, mul­ti-lay­ered dra­ma with man­i­fold loca­tions and char­ac­ters, some of which are not intro­duced until half-way through, and in superbly real­is­ing this, acclaim goes to the ter­rif­ic ensem­ble cast.

Jac­ki Weaver par­tic­u­lar­ly excels as the dom­i­neer­ing matri­arch, achiev­ing one of the most vivid and bone-chill­ing por­traits of pure, undi­lut­ed evil in mod­ern cin­e­ma. A mous­tached Pearce is char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly excel­lent as Leck­ie (the one male char­ac­ter in the film to be shown step­ping aside from his job and enjoy­ing a lov­ing and sta­ble fam­i­ly life), offer­ing J a glimpse of a safer and calmer world.

Dur­ing pro­duc­tion, Michôd ref­er­enced Heat and Mag­no­lia as the bench­marks of what he want­ed to achieve. With Ani­mal King­dom, he arguably sur­pass­es both.