Directed by:
David MichôdScreenplay:
David MichôdCinematography:
Adam ArkapawComposer:
Antony PartosCast:
James Frecheville, Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce, Luke Ford, Jacki Weaver, Sullivan Stapleton, Dan Wyllie, Anthony Hayes, Laura Wheelwright (more)Plots(1)
Following the death of his mother, 17 year-old Joshua 'J' Cody (newcomer James Frecheville) moves in with his doting grandmother, Smurf (Jacki Weaver), and her three criminal sons - the Cody boys. The eldest, "Pope" (Ben Mendelsohn) is an armed robber, in hiding from a cadre of renegade detectives. Then there's Craig (Sullivan Stapleton), a successful but volatile drug dealer, and the youngest, Darren (Luke Ford), who naively follows his brothers' lead. Just as Pope's business partner and best mate, Barry "Baz" Brown (Joel Edgerton), decides that he wants out, tensions between the Codys and the police explode. J finds himself at the centre of a cold-blooded revenge plot that turns his family upside down and throws him directly into the path of senior homicide detective, Nathan Leckie (Guy Pearce). Animal Kingdom is a powerful crime drama that tells the story of a tense battle between a criminal family and the police and of the ordinary lives caught in the middle. (Madman Entertainment)
(more)Reviews (2)
Formally, it’s ok, the problem is that Animal Kingdom feels as if it wanted to be a good gangster flick. Almost every sentence, every look and every scene feels that they are there only because someone wanted to make a universally good gangster movie – it all felt too cynical and forced. There’s no creativity, only an effort to fit in a category. It does work in some way, of course, but I’m not a fan.
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It's probably because I've seen too many similarly toned crime movies lately, but this one simply didn't interest me. The acting performances are good, no doubt about that, but what's the point if I'm watching a movie with characters that are easy to dislike, there's nothing about them that I would want to follow. And in the end, even the story failed to captivate me.
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