Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Michael Ledo 17 year old Josh's mother dies from an OD which forces him to move back into his crime family. His grandmother (Jacki Weaver) is the Ma Barker type in that she stereotypically loves her boys perhaps a little too much in an unhealthy way. The beginning of the movie is filled with a lot of Josh's first person narration which introduces the characters as well as give us Josh's fatalist philosophy that is well beyond his age and maturity.His new family teaches him things he didn't learn living with his mother like: Washing your hands after you use the restroom, playing pull my finger, and using a gun for road rage. As a "crime family" they are rather unimpressive. Selling cocaine seems to be their major source of income and they have help with an inside man to do that. Josh wants out, but doesn't know how to do it.The film at times moves slow but is never dull. It is more drama than action. Josh (James Frecheville) is the main character and is seldom far from a scene.F-bomb. No sex or nudity.

patrick powell I don't know what it is about Australian cinema and filmmakers these past 15 years, but they are just getting better and better. OK, so we here in the Northern Hemisphere don't necessarily get to see the dross. Granted. But what we do see shows that there's talent galore down under. There are, of course, talented actors, writers, cinematographers and directors around the world, but at the moment Australia seems to have found its own voice, its own style which is not just unique, but interesting, accomplished and gripping.Unlike so much high-energy Hollywood dreck, Animal Kingdom relies on a good script, a gripping story, good acting, solid characterisation and great directing. There is no gratuitous flashiness to cover up bald patches. This particular film's style is minimalist, the camera hand-held (as far as I can see) throughout. But that doesn't lead to tricksy artiness.It allows the actors to act - it's what they do best after all - with none of them falling back onto the schtick they are always hired for - Bruce Willis being Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise being Tom Cruise, you get the picture. All I can say is if you get the chance to catch this, catch it. Oh, and keep making them, Australia.

CountZero313 A disaffected young man makes a fateful phone call when he discovers his mother dead on the living room sofa after an overdose.This compelling tale of the unraveling of a notorious crime family centers on Joshua, a nephew and apprentice brought into the fold after his mother's demise, despite her stated intentions to isolate and protect him from her mother and siblings. We soon realise why - the brothers are armed robbers, supported by their over-affectionate mother Janine (a creepily effective Jacki Weaver), currently lying low while the cops look for Pope, the leader of the group.Pope's menace is gradually built by keeping him off-screen for most of the opening. Ben Mendelsohn as Pope gives a performance that lives up to the billing, mixing calm deadliness with explosive rage. He kills by instinct and feels no remorse, the character who most embodies the film's title. When he turns on Joshua, this provides the main narrative line that reaches a shocking but merited conclusion.The camera stays close to the characters and the dialogue is fractured and in the vernacular. This makes it all the more gritty and real. James Frecheville as Joshua is our guide through this world, an unresponsive drone most of the time, till he is compelled to take charge by the threat to his own life and the inability of the authorities to protect him. One genre strand here is the worm that turned. Frecheville is stunning as the taciturn, immature young man who has to learn and grow up quickly in a hostile world.For a crime drama about a violent family the film admirably does not linger on the gun violence. One key turning point, the (alleged) murder of a family intimate by the cops, is rendered through a reaction shot with Pope. The revenge killing of policemen is shown in long shot through silhouettes. The drama avoids schlock violence to stay with the characters and their motivations, and is all the better for it.The cheap, tasteless interiors, scrubby front yards, daggy fashions, head-bumping masculinity and authentic Aussie accents reminded me of Snowtown, another film about violent men in anonymous Australian suburbs. Is this an emerging Aussie aesthetic? If so, I for one would like to see more.

Scott Lang Everything that happens in this film is wrong. 1) The one good brother that wants to exit his family's life of crime is MURDERED by cops in a grocery store parking lot, which leads the other brothers to exact revenge on them. Now, if you're going to base a film on the investigation of these 2 cops' murders, you have to make me want to see the killers brought to justice. The motivation isn't there because you feel that the cops should've rightly been killed. 2)When the paranoid uncle sees the cops coming for him, he does the absolutely most illogical thing he could think of: grab his shotgun and run directly into a wide open field where he is subsequently shot and killed. All he had to do was nothing and he would've be aquitted of the crime just like his other 2 brothers. 3)The girlfriend goes to the lead's house and doesn't even confront the uncles about having the boy break up with her. Why the hell did you go over there then?!4) The lead runs from a cop who blatantly tries to kill him while in witness protection, and he doesn't go straight to Guy Pierce, the ONE GUY who wants to help him and tell him about it?5)While being transported to trial, a cop directly points his gun at the lead and dry fires it for NO REASON. I shouldn't have to go into why this shouldn't have happened. 6)The lead undermines the police's entire investigation to get his uncle's off, which makes you not care about him AT ALL anymore, or his scumbag family. He did it to murder his eldest uncle himself, and then embraces his grandmother lovingly who, for the previous 15 minutes, was trying her damnedest to have him killed. He also chose to spare his gay(?) uncle, who was also complicit in his girlfriend's murder! He just sat there and watched it happen!I really could go on but i'm nearing the 1k word limit and I think you get the point.I really wanted to enjoy this movie going in; it's competently shot, the actors are good (besides the dry performance by the lead), cinematically it is top notch. But everything that happens in it is wrong, and it infuriated me to the point where I had to write this review about it.