Review of Animal Kingdom (2010) by Marcdoyle — 14 Aug 2010

When the credits rolled, I sat there stunned with this goofy grin on my face. This was easily one of the best 3 or 4 movies I've seen this year, and I see a bunch of 'em. It's so rich and so layered that I don't even want to discuss much of it in detail.

It's a movie about a Melbourne family known for taking down banks, but it's more specifically about a young family member's learning to survive in the animal kingdom. The acting is uniformly superb. The writing does away with all of the hackneyed scenes we've seen a thousand times before.

There's no need for the courtroom scene, or that of the young grieving widow, or funerals. We've been there. The story is like an extremely taut dramatic rope that gets tweaked about every 15 minutes or so.

It was just one hell of a refreshing film. Do what you can to see this thing. Not everyone in my crew loved it as much as I did, but we talked about it continuously for about a half hour when it was over.

This has been a tough year for quality movies - don't let the choice steak slip through your fingers (as someone once told me).