Animal Kingdom (2010)

Short film director David Michod thought he’d try his hand at writing and directing a feature-length film and began that phase of his career with a doozy, the intense and interesting ANIMAL KINGDOM. A story of the criminal underworld in Melbourne, Australia, ANIMAL KINGDOM tells the story of the Cody family and is, apparently, based on a true story.

The film opens on 17-year-old Joshua “J” Cody (James Frecheville) witnessing the death of his mother from a heroin overdose. With no family left, he contacts his grandmother for a place to stay, never mind the fact that his grandmother presides over her three sons in a quasi-incestuous manner and that the sons are all openly involved in some sort of crime, from drug dealing to theft. These things happen right in front of the grandmother, played with quiet intensity by Oscar-nominated Jacki Weaver, thus the reason that J’s mom kept him shielded from this side of the family prior to her death.

Without looking to do so, J is quickly versed on the rules both spoken and unspoken of the criminal underworld and how the business works. He attempts to main teenage normalcy by spending time with his girlfriend, but just as it happened to Michael Corleone in “The Godfather,” the pull of the family business begins to become too great. Even as J stays out of the criminal acts, he finds himself defending his cousins and covering for them, and things get more complicated when a homicide detective tracking one of the brothers as a prime suspect for some murders attempts to befriend J and rescue him from the rest of the Cody family. But devoted first to her sons, J’s grandmother puts him in the middle of a tense standoff between the police and the family.

With the always-awesome Guy Pearce as the detective and a breakout performance by Frecheville as the film’s main character, J, ANIMAL KINGDOM succeeds in large part because of the quality of its performances. Weaver’s nomination for an Oscar is perhaps a bit of a surprise, as she is certainly intense but definitely a lot more understated than the types of performances that get such recognition. This makes her nomination refreshing, regardless of whether or not she might have been better than other deserving possibilities. But if you put her work in this film up against what eventual-winner Melissa Leo did in “The Fighter,” you might not even notice her.

What works best in ANIMAL KINDOM is the study of family dynamics and the natural human panic of being hunted, which undoubtedly explains the film’s clever title. It’s the kind of film made outside of the United States that a film lover worries others won’t know about and check out. Your loss. ANIMAL KINGDOM is intensely-acted, suspenseful and engaging. And writer/director Michod now belongs on the radar of cinephiles everywhere.

3.0 out of 4