Earlier this year “Winter’s Bone” impressed simply by upending the standard tropes and expectations of the “Southern drama.” Exploring a side of the Ozarks we’ve never seen on camera before, Debra Granik’s film spun a refreshing, exciting tale in a beautifully realized setting that bravely defied the usual portrayal of “Southern life” on the big screen. We bring this up because from the first frame of “Animal Kingdom,” it becomes readily apparent that this crime family film is unlike anything we’ve seen before.
The crime family/saga film is practically a tradition in Hollywood. With well established rules, stock characters and even stock stories the genre has largely run itself into a rut. The inner workings of the large crime families are general knowledge and really, the entire idea of the successful contemporary crime family is practically a lifestyle that’s packaged and branded. So how wonderfully bracing it is that from the start of writer/director David Michôd’s debut feature film, he tosses out everything that has become routine in the genre and starts from scratch.
The story revolves around the Cody family, and as the film opens, it finds the clan within a transition phase that is quietly tearing them apart. Craig Cody (Sullivan Stapleton), the quasi-leader of the group, has turned to dealing drugs. His younger brother Darren (Luke Ford) doesn’t have much of a presence, but works alongside his siblings to keep the family trade going. Their eldest brother Pope (a frightening Ben Mendelsohn in a breakthrough performance) is currently in hiding from the police while his best friend and business partner Barry Brown (Joel Edgerton) is getting tired of “the life” and is looking to go legit and start making money on the stock market, seeing the potential to get rich, without doing dirty work.
Coming into all of this is their teenage nephew Joshua aka J (James Frecheville). After his mother overdoses and dies, he comes to live with Uncle Craig, who shares a home with Smurf (Jacki Weaver), the duplicitous matriarch of the clan and it isn’t long before Joshua becomes associated with the family business. However, when Pope decides to come out of hiding the family dynamic takes a seismic shift, and it isn’t long until the reverberations blow them apart.
But, despite all the drama going on, the first thing you’ll notice in the film is that the violence is brief, furious and deadly. Unlike standard genre films which have no problem showing two rival gangs loading up the body count and unleashing round after round of ammunition, you can count the number of gunshots in this film on one hand. Yet, every single use is not only vital to the story, it carries with it the weight of responsibility. Every bullet is measured and every life has a cost that is measured in the narrative.
The next thing you’ll notice is that this isn’t a particularly successful crime family. There are no mansions or expensive clothes and cars. These are middle class thugs who have turned what was probably petty teenage crime into a career choice. Moreover, and as as J notes early in the film, this is a family living in fear not only of the police, but of each other. Unlike other gangsters who swagger through the streets, these guys keep a low profile and don’t trust anyone past their own nose. And it is that fear and anxiety, gnawing at their insides, at their every action, that begins to unravel their business and the relationships they share with each other.
Investigating the family is senior cop Nathan Leckie, played by Guy Pearce in what is one of the best bits of supporting role casting we’ve seen all year. Witnessing the crumbling of a family that has kept their secrets hidden well enough to keep them out of jail, Leckie senses the increasing paranoia and he pounces on J to try and to, first, save him from making the same mistakes his blood did and second, to get him to inform. While Leckie’s role isn’t big, it is absolutely key in terms of establishing the film’s moral center as well as addressing the thematic core of “Animal Kingdom.” Pearce’s casting works because the film needs a recognizable face with presence to keep the film’s morality axis from spinning right out of control. As he builds the case, J must make the decision as to whether or not he can trust his own family to protect him, and what he will do to carve out his place in the world.
For much of the film Frechville is a moody, largely mute blank slate. He’s hard to get a read on and at times, it almost seems as if the actor is underplaying the character to his detriment. But as the film keeps moving, opening up and revealing the shades of family life we realize it’s a defense mechanism. J has been dropped into a world that is beyond his comprehension. He tries to escape in a budding relationship with girlfriend Nicky (Laura Wheelwright), but as the pressure mounts, he knows he must face the family he’s got and all that bottled emotion comes spilling out in a couple of well placed, absolutely moving scenes.
The film’s first two acts are a wonderful study of the Cody family microcosm, but it’s the third act that pushes the film from a mere tale of criminal dealings, into something far grander and epic in scope. Rarely does a film leave the door open for a sequel that you actually want to walk through, but when the credits came up, we were ready to see where these characters and the results of their actions bring them next. In “Animal Kingdom,” David Michôd has established the next great crime family classic, a film that deserves to stand alongside “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas” not only because it matches those films toe-to-toe in detail and richness, but also because it does so on its own, wholly original terms. Nerve jangling, breathless, emotionally true and riveting, “Animal Kingdom” stands at the top of the food chain and dares you to watch. [A-]
