Animal Kingdom

Dialectically delineating the thin line separating criminals from officers of the law, David Michôd's Animal Kingdom introduces us to a family of professional malefactors as they tempestuously coexist with their surrounding community. The Cody family is fucked, although their commitment to one another, idealized by their cheerful and sweet mother (Jackie Weaver), is unwavering, assuming you don't mess with the cops. Josh Cody's (James Frecheville) mother wanted him to have nothing to do with her explosive family and remained distant from their activities for many years. But after she dies of a heroin overdose, Josh is thrust into their entropic den of depravity. Michôd's depiction of the police isn't any more uplifting as they shoot unarmed citizens merely suspected of crimes and make a profit off the fruits of their narcotics operations. The inhabitants of Animal Kingdom starkly develop intriguing personalities, Michôd's hard-boiled script and astute direction giving everyone involved the chance to distinctly stake their artistic territory. The atmosphere of psychological terror affectively cultivated by Ben Mendelsohn's psychotic portrait of Andrew 'Pope' Cody integrally structures the film's ambience. Animal Kingdom maintains a bizarre relationship with right-wing politics insofar as the Cody's are destined for prison while functioning as an iconic, albeit troubled, loving family. At the same time, while individual cops seek communal justice (Guy Pearce as Officer Leckie), the legal system presented is thoroughly corrupt. Josh must decide how to roll with the punches if he's to symbolically represent Australia's political future. A coming of age tale cloaked in a paranoid blanket of fear and tension, Animal Kingdom boldly interrogates the 'underworld' while offering a solution which does what it must to survive.