DVD RvReview: Animal Kingdom
I was pleasantly surprised to find this film wasn’t a nature documentary. It’s about Australian gangsters shooting each other in the face. Find out the verdict below…
Animal Kingdom (four stars)
It says an awful lot about this Aussie drama that a performance by the always brilliant Guy Pearce is not even close to being the best thing about it. A look at the fall of a Melbourne crime family, Animal Kingdom is raw, gripping and original. There are no overdramatic shootouts here – all the violence is frighteningly real: unexpected, shocking and over in a split second. The film follows teenager Josh (James Frecheville), who has no choice but to move in with his crooked uncles after his mother dies of a heroin overdose. At the head of the family, however, sits his grandmother (an Oscar-nominated Jackie Weaver), who rules the roost behind a combination of smiles, baking and kissing her adult sons on the lips for a few seconds longer than is necessary. Weaver is fantastic as the creepy matriarch but Ben Mendelsohn is just as good as psychotic son number one. As Josh says at the beginning of the film, ‘crooks always come undone’. Yet it’s watching how it happens that makes Animal Kingdom so compelling.
This review first appeared in the Metro newspaper
WHAT DID YOU THINK OF ANIMAL KINGDOM?
Ross v Ross 
July 13, 2011 at 12:53 pm
I really loved this movie. Jackie Weaver was amazing and totally scary. Guy Pearce was almost like an Aussie Commissioner Gordon as well which is always cool!!
Great and hard hitting show!
July 14, 2011 at 1:15 pm
I loved this flick, and you make a good point about Mendelsohn being just as good as Jackie Weaver. Mesmerizing stuff…you never know what’s going to happen next, especially when his character is on the screen.
July 23, 2011 at 12:29 am
I really liked Edgerton’s character so having him exit that early kind of turned me off, but a good film nonetheless.
September 24, 2011 at 10:12 am
i loved this film too! and yep.. its the realness of it all that makes it so gripping.. no over-the-top overly gruesome violence.. told the story exactly how it would have been! great aussie film!