On Animal Kingdom

In an early voice over Joshua, the young narrator of Animal Kingdom says that criminals are all scared, because each one is aware that sooner or later, they’ll get caught. This is an unspoken assumption, on the part of audiences and characters for many films that focus on career criminals. From Heat (1995) to Point Break (1991) they are looking for a way out or a way to reduce the risk until an out becomes available. The difference with Animal Kingdom is we see a family of criminals who haven’t yet reached the point of realisation that their way of life has a short expiry date and are under pressure from a corrupt and illegally violent crime squad who are ready to put them into forced retirement. The most professional and relatable of the criminals, Barry is soon killed, leaving the rest struggling for leadership and us, as an audience, in the company of some intimidating and unpredictable characters.

Animal Kingdom is at its best when showing the surviving family in close confines; the almost incestuous and definitely overbearing matriarch, the paranoid drug addict, the quieter younger brother and the feared and mentally unstable elder brother, Pope. The metaphor being if you placed animals not at ease with each other in such close confines, there would soon be violence. (Noah’s Ark doesn’t focus on the animal infighting) And violence there is. We see all this through the eyes of Joshua, nephew to the criminals and grandson to the matriarch. Joshua has been thrown into this world after the death of his mother, who had the sense to keep him away from her family. However, Joshua’s reticence makes it difficult to identify with him and this is a major issue of the film. We are never sure what he is thinking or emoting and we leave with little understanding of his motivations, feelings or ambitions after the concluding events of the film.

Animal Kingdom doesn’t go for the action set pieces of other films about characters like these. It instead focuses on the relationships and the family dynamic, which is pushed to breaking point as the police close in. There are some clichés here, but they are delicately handled and importantly well acted. Animal Kingdom is far from ground breaking, even for Australian cinema (little of which makes it here), but it is never boring often makes for tense viewing.