{"id":10952,"date":"2011-02-22T13:07:50","date_gmt":"2011-02-22T13:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=10952"},"modified":"2011-02-22T13:18:14","modified_gmt":"2011-02-22T13:18:14","slug":"animal-kingdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/02\/22\/animal-kingdom\/","title":{"rendered":"Animal Kingdom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-10953\" title=\"Left to Right: James Frecheville as Joshua \u2018J\u2019 Cody, Jacki Weaver as Janine \u2018Smurf\u2019 Cody and Dan Wyllie as Ezra White. Photo by Tony Mott, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics\" src=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Animal-Kingdom.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"298\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A superbly crafted Australian crime drama filled with excellent performances marks a stunning debut feature for director <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/David_Mich%C3%B4d\">David Mich\u00f4d<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Set in Melbourne, and loosely based on <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pettingill_family\">real events<\/a>, it tells the story of Joshua Cody (James Frecheville), a teenager who joins a crime family headed by his grandmother, Janine &#8216;Smurf&#8217; Cody (Jacki Weaver).<\/p>\n<p>We gradually realise that his new suburban home is a snake pit of illegality featuring a sinister eldest son Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), his business partner Baz (Joel Edgerton), the livewire drug dealer Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) and the quiet Darren (Luke Ford).<\/p>\n<p>When a local police officer (Guy Pearce) engaged in a lengthy battle with the family tries to tempt Joshua to help him bring down the Cody family, things start to escalate.<\/p>\n<p>Skilfully avoiding crime movie clich\u00e9s, Animal Kingdom has a distinctive, brooding menace that you rarely see in modern cinema, let alone the crime genre.<\/p>\n<p>This is a claustrophobic and unpredictable world in which hardly anyone can be trusted and where slow burning tensions instantly explode.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"560\" height=\"349\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sYMgBjdk4RY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, the focus is kept mostly on the Cody clan and the police form a shadowy background presence, popping up like eagles snatching eggs from the family nest.<\/p>\n<p>It works more as a riveting character study than a conventional crime film and features some brilliant ensemble acting: Frecheville is quietly brilliant as the protagonist; Weaver is wonderfully charismatic as the Lady Macbeth matriarch and Mendelsohn is hypnotic as one of the creepiest villains in recent film history.<\/p>\n<p>Mich\u00f4d must be given huge credit for the fact that this is a crime movie with no obvious influences. At times it appears to be channelling Michael Mann and Michael Haneke, but it has its own unique flavour.<\/p>\n<p>Part of what makes the film so effective is that terror can lurk in the most everyday places, so the audience \u2013 like the protagonist &#8211; is always kept on edge and doesn\u2019t quite know who to trust.<\/p>\n<p>One scene in which a car reverses out of a suburban garage is masterfully wrought with dread and tension.<\/p>\n<p>The confident, widescreen visuals by DP Adam Arkapaw are highly effective, contrasting the shadowy, interior worlds of bungalows and offices with the harsh exterior light of Southern Australia.<\/p>\n<p>A distinctive score by Antony Partos adds to the atmosphere of dread and overall Mich\u00f4d has crafted one of the most accomplished films to come out of Australia in recent years.<\/p>\n<p>&gt; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.animalkingdommovie.com\/\">Official site<\/a><br \/>\n&gt; Reviews of Animal Kingdom at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metacritic.com\/movie\/animal-kingdom\/critic-reviews\">Metacritic<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/mubi.com\/notebook\/posts\/2138\">MUBi<\/a><br \/>\n&gt; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm2391575\/\">David Mich\u00f4d<\/a> at the IMDb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A superbly crafted Australian crime drama filled with excellent performances marks a stunning debut feature for director David Mich\u00f4d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,5,8],"tags":[1864,1865],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10952"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}