Review of Animal Kingdom (2010) by Tomas T — 16 Sep 2011

Noteworthy crime movies from Australia's "outback" are few and far between, thus Animal Kingdom is a welcome and interesting addition to the crime movie genre.

The movie tells a story of a Joshua Cody (James Frecheville), a youngster, taken in by his grandmother after his mother overdoses and dies. Little does Joshua know that his new foster family represents a dying breed of lifestyle criminals - unable to cope with social changes around them. The movie tittle - Animal Kingdom - suitably describes the Cody criminal family with the ruthless and unstable Andrew "Pope" Cody (Ben Mendelsohn) being the alpha male; ruling the family with the help of their mother Janine (Jacki Weaver), a cunning matriarch and brains of the family. The rest of the family (Tender Darren Cody [Luke Ford], the adopted Joshua [James Frecheville] and impulsive Craig Cody [Sullivan Stapleton]) are kept close and at least Joshua and Darren live in the shadow of fear of the two and strong power figures. Highly dangerous, the Cody family lay waste anybody and anything in their paths until Nathan Leckie (Guy Pearce) - a police officer - sets out to bring down them and takes notice that the young Joshua is held "captive" of the family much against his will.

The movie heavily bases on characters and it is good to see much unknown names in the main roles. Most of them perform admirably and are convincing enough, with the absolute best of the pack being Ben Mendelsohn as "PoPe" - a truly disturbing figure - and the matriarch mother by Jacki Weaver. The rest of the cast are somewhat overshadowed by the two and Guy Pearce - the veteran Aussie actor - is only in a side role. Besides the acting, the director David Michôd fills the movie with strong soundtracks and plethora of slow down scenes which help to build up the tension. In the end however the movie ends up lacking a strong main character as Joshua by James Frencheville proves to be an uninteresting encounter causing the whole movie to limp a little. That does not change the fact that the Animal Kingdom is pleasure to watch, just that with more interesting main character choice the movie could have been great deal better.