Animal Kingdom (2010)Director: David Michod
Stars: James Frecheville, Jacki Weaver, Ben Mendelsohn, Luke Ford
Animal Kingdom revolves around a family of criminals living in Melbourne, Australia. Eighteen year old Joshua (The charisma-deprived James Frecheville), following his mothers fatal overdose, is brought under the wing of this clan of hooligans, which include his Grandmother and a few Uncles. They're a normal, loving, pig-headed family, except for all the bank-robbing and drug dealing that they've got going on. Joshua isn't immediately brought into the family business, but he happens to be around when things hit the fan, and slowly but surely gets sucked further and further into their world.
I was excited to see this, based on the glowing reviews and the presence of Joel Edgerton (Who was great in The Square) and Guy Pearce (Who's just great). Instead, I get very little of either J or G, and a fairly straight-forward crime story involving characters that are too dumb for me to care about.
Outside of the lead role, the performances are all fine. Jacki Weaver is particularly effective as the bent Grandmother, and Ben Mendelsohn is excellently unhinged as the oldest Uncle. There are a couple of effective kills, brutal and unexpected. That's where I start to run out of compliments. Um. . . It's framed efficiently?
I think that if this had been an American film, no one would have batted an eye. You would then be forced to compare it to other American made crime films, like The Godfather or Goodfellas. As it is, being Australian, I guess it gets a pass for being mediocre, because those accents are just so darn charming.
Frederick Opines: MIDDLING
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