Dir. David Michôd, Australia , 2010, 108 mins
Cast: Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce, Luke Ford, Jacki Weaver, James Frecheville
Review by Matt Glasby
Most Australian films explore either the unforgiving landscape ( Walkabout/ /Long Weekend ) or the immutable characters ( Chopper/, /Crocodile Dundee ) it creates. The most memorable examples ( The Proposition/Wake In Fright ) do both.
Arriving much garlanded from Melbourne , and based on real incidents, Michôd’s phenomenal crime saga bucks the trend, stranding its protagonists, a family of feral outlaws, in bland suburbia. There are no sunsets or seascapes to behold; no beauty, no escape. The only time we even glimpse the outback is to see one character gunned down like a dog.
When his mother dies of a heroin overdose, teenager J (Frecheville), a monument to impotence and inarticulacy, calls his estranged grandmother (Weaver) for help. She’s an ageing Baby Jane, whose maternal interest in “her boys” borders on incestuous, and J soon finds himself adopted by this criminal fraternity, which includes straight-arrow Barry (Edgerton), the feckless Darren (Ford) and uncle Pope (the terrific Mendelsohn), a dead-eyed druggie who turns from pathetic to terrifying on a dime.
Just minutes in the entire family troops past the camera in one of many well-judged slow-motion sequences, often scored by distant sirens. It’s a testament to the power of the performances and Michôd’s tight scripting that you immediately know exactly who’s who and what they’re capable of, even as this latticework of cops and (mainly) robbers extends to include Pearce’s no-nonsense policeman and his colleagues. “Everything has got to do with everyone,” J is told – not a platitude but a threat.
More Kath And Kim than Corleone, the family members go about their grubby business without delusions of grandeur and much of the film’s drama stems from the juxtaposition of the mundane and the terrifying. A minor traffic incident threatens to become a shooting; murderers silence their demons with Xboxes and bongs; Pope carries J’s sleeping girlfriend to bed but is he going to tuck her in or rape her? “She’s beautiful mate,” he says, simply, to J – just one of many scenes that manages to be both tense and depressing at the same time.
Although the dialogue crackles with indigenous deadpan humour, there’s a sadness to these characters that suffuses the entire film. Inured to the horrors they perpetrate, Pope and co aren’t above the law, they’re below it; following their own instincts won’t bring them freedom but obliteration. They may be animals, but they’re not magnificent predators stalking the wilds, they’re rats chewing their own legs off in a trap. That they made it themselves is all the more poignant.
