Animal Kingdom (Movie Review)
This afternoon I hooked over to the State Cinema in North Hobart for a showing of Animal Kingdom. Part of this decision was to kick off my month break and the rest because I had a fair idea of the underlying culture they were trying to capture.
Animal Kingdom captured a little of that unpredictable raw bogun testosterone reality I saw in The Boys (1998) – still the bar for bogun if you’re into authenticity. The only difference being that Animal Kingdom was definately focused on being a cinematographic experience, whereas The Boys took that rawness one step further and made it a palpable cud resonating in the back of my memory. A lot of my life was spent living around exactly that type of psychopath… and some might have played me in the same dimensions.
The movie made me a little uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong I thought Animal Kingdom resonated through the cinema as one of those profound shared experiences – or maybe that was just my past talking back through the storyline. However, the one thing I didn’t expect from the film was the close parallel to Melbourne’s infamous Underworld family (the Petingill-Allens) under the iron-fisted control of matriarch Kath Pettingill. The revenge shooting of two police officers ambushed in suburban Walsh Street, the murderous Dennis Allen killing people in his living room (Kath’s memoirs said 27, if memory serves)… the real late 1980s early 1990s executions of underworld figures – mainly associates of the Pettingill-Allen clan. The police used a tactic through those years of two dead crims for one dead cop – true story.
So I kind of wondered with such a powerful story – and I know it wasn’t biographical in the true sense, particularly the ending – if they might have actually packed that little extra punch into the film by sharing that with the general audience. Perhaps they didn’t want to share a dime with Kath and crew… if any of them still breath air in freedom.
That being said… and probably that isn’t a negative at all… Animal Kingdom captured a lot of what lamer Australian crime series have been working around in a glossy advertising driven format for the last few years. I think it sits neatly into the Australian cultural heritage between The Boys and Ghosts of the Civil Dead (1988) – undeniably the most authentic Australian maximum security film experience to make it onto film. Take my experienced word on that claim… oh Nick Cave has a great role in that one.
And full credit to the cast for authentic performances. Guy Pierce as Detective Senior Sergeant Leckie (probably the last honest cop left in Melbourne); Jackie Weaver as the cold blooded sociopathic (rare for women) matriarch; Ben Mendelsohn as ‘Pope’ Cody (based more than likely on Dennis Allen); and, James Frecheville as the young Joshua. You know when you’re a computer person and you see rubbish that destroys the believability… well these guys were authentic as crooks and detectives.
The most likable character Joel Edgerton as ‘Baz’ Brown, a family friend and cohort, falls to the war in a shopping centre carpark (based on fact, by the way). At that point it’s hard not to sympathise with the Cody’s and their own version of the rational truth… a brilliant storyline that drags you all the way back to seeing what bastards they were all along.
The facts run so close to these real events that I’m even a little worried about hurting people’s feelings by saying it out aloud. Maybe the logic was just not to get dumped in the trashy can with Underbelly?
Also as an aside… to see a real taste of the matriarch in action check out this news article from 2002 where she’s talking about evening up the score over the execution of Victor Pierce, one of her sons. She’s lost a few along the way.
