The machinery animating Animal Kingdom feels unfathomably epic even though the story it tells is relatively trivial. While the events it unfolds are, in the grand scheme of criminal lore, comparatively inconsequential, while you’re watching it, they feel as primal and as visceral as any of cinema’s greatest crime epics.

Animal Kingdom tells the story of the incremental fall of one of Melbourne’s most ruthless criminal families as seen through the eyes of Joshua “J” (James Frecheville), a teenager who, after his mother’s suicide, is taken into the fold by his matriarchal grandmother, Smurf (Jacki Weaver). Smurf’s three sons have their fingers in much of Melbourne’s seedy criminal underbelly from bank robberies to narcotics trafficking. Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), the eldest and most ruthless of the Cody gang, is laying low but forced to the surface when his partner Barry “Baz” Brown (Joel Edgerton) questions whether or not he has the stomach for the game any longer. Middle brother Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) is the most spirited, but also the least emotionally stable. Darren (Luke Ford), the youngest, is more worried about battling his conscience than the ever-encroaching police. And overseeing it all is Smurf, a woman of exterior warmth and affection who mercilessly, manipulatively and icily pulls every string. As the brothers begin initiating J into a life more menacing than anything he could ever have imagined, Det. Nathan Leckie (Guy Pearce) sees an opportunity to get on the inside of the gang. The question is, where do J’s loyalties lie?

Animal Kingdom, which takes its cues from Greek tragedy, has an odd, intoxicating tonality—heightened and operatic on the one hand and intensely naturalistic on the other. This seemingly inexplicable duality gives the film a raw emotional power it should not be able to conjure but is more than capable of sustaining. These are not titanic, mythic figures; they are little more than two-bit hoods who live demonstrably middle class lives, sustained from score to score. Yet writer/director David Michôd tells their story with such exacting focus and brutal realism that it is impossible not to see larger archetypes at work. Whatever else they are, the Codys are first and foremost a family, shown in all its intimate rapport and daily banality. But they are also thieves and killers and live in a constant state of unrelenting fear. As one character tells us prophetically, “Crooks always come undone. Always. One way or another.”

It is almost impossible to tell the good guys apart from the bad guys. The cops in Animal Kingdom are as corrupt, heartless and amoral as the men they hunt. This gives the film an electrifying cynicism not found in most stories of black and white polarities. Animal Kingdom has two exemplary black hats in Ben Mendelsohn and Jacki Weaver. Mendelsohn is eerie incarnate, a psychopath who makes inactivity terrifying, who channels stillness into something as ominous as explosive wrath. Weaver’s Smurf is all that is warm, soft, tender and mothering. But make no mistake, she is a lioness and these are her cubs (a visual motif throughout the film). Should you come between her and their safety, she will eviscerate you and scatter your entrails without hesitation. She is unbowed no matter how much blood, either her own or that of others, is spilled. Frecheville, the conduit through whom we are to interpret these events, is the greatest enigma, an emotional void so bland as to almost invite speculation of miscasting—that is until something occurs to breaks his casual indifference and our passive regard.

There isn’t likely to be a better directorial debut this year than first-time feature director Michôd’s seething, restrained crime drama. Part Martin Scorsese, part Michael Mann, Michôd does a phenomenal job filling trifling, innocuous moments with palpable, stomach coiling dread. His conclusion—startling, decisive and open-ended—is indicative of this tightly wound Aussie Goodfellas from start to finish. In Animal Kingdom, where the jungle stands as an allegory for suburban violence, survival of the fittest is the only rule.

© Copyright 2010 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.

Directed by David Michôd
Starring: James Frecheville, Jacki Weaver, Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Sullivan Stapleton, Luke Ford, Guy Pearce
Rated R for violence, drug content and pervasive language.
Running Time: 113 minutes