Animal Kingdom

Loved this movie. The kid is completely deadpan, unreadable, and seemingly helpless, but he's got his own chops (he was, after all, raised by a junkie - he's not a complete innocent). The ending is sheer perfection. And so is the title.

A slow burning crime flick from Australia with a great cast. Bleak. After losing his mother, 'J' would've been better off homeless than looking to his extended family of scumbags for shelter. Live and learn.

Very intense film, featuring universally excellent performances. You wouldn't want to be anywhere near these people if they were real, but it's fascinating to watch the stories unfold. I had heard a lot about this film before seeing it, and it lived up to the hype.

Boring ...

After his mother dies of a heroin overdose Joshua Cody, not quite eighteen and not particularly bright, is taken in by his estranged grandmother and her adult sons...uncles he hasn’t seen in years. There’s a reason his mom tried to shield him from the rest of her family however, for under the tutelage of Grandma Cody and uncle Andrew (aka “Pope”) the family home is a volatile den of thieves with armed robbery and drug dealing the main sources of income. Surrounded thus by crooked cops, crooked relatives, and the crooked lawyers who defend them, Joshua quickly learns that in the human jungle the strong must fight for survival while the weak must align themselves as best they can; everyone else is fair game. Unfolding like a waking nightmare, David Michôd’s visceral gut-punch of a film follows Joshua as he tries to determine his place in the food chain, especially after the slaying of two police officers puts him squarely in the crosshairs of both the authorities and the Cody family alpha male, uncle “Pope”, a soft-spoken sociopath with a murderous temper. A far cry from the usual crime drama, Animal Kingdom features a brilliantly downplayed script enhanced by grim, dreamlike cinematography and a disparate soundtrack of muted pop tunes and somber acoustical passages. Michôd’s cast is picture perfect as they flesh out their characters, especially Jacki Weaver as Joshua’s grandmother; a seemingly benign white trash matriarch who just may be the most cold-hearted predator of them all. A horrifying and unapologetic film with an ending that is at once shockingly unexpected and sadly inevitable. Good cinema!

Well under-acted, but often plodding, character studies of unattractive criminal family.

This is not an 'action' film,..
nor is it "Australia's answer to Goodfellas".

The title, Animal Kingdom, has little meaning except perhaps that we live in a world where dog eats dog. This is a great crime/gangster film from down-under. The story is about a 17-year-old boy caught in a crime family, doing things he was told to do and had no control of. When his girlfriend was killed, he took on vengeance against a ruthless killer, something no one had expected.

I didn't enjoy the part of the movie I was able to watch. Couldn't finish it because the DVD is scratched.

Another brilliant film from OZ (Australia)
Will a young man align with FAMILY or CONSCIENCE.
Is it a choice between two?
Better watch the film and judge for yourself.

This is a very interesting movie. All the characters are done very well except the main character who is a lifeless zombie, maybe that’s what they wanted to show given everything he has been through but I didn’t care for him. Well worth the watch.