Animal Kingdom

A teen whose mother has died of drug overdose goes to live with his grandmother and uncles, who are involved in bank robberies and other crimes. They are not strangers to him although he hasn’t seen them for a long time. Josh (James Frecheville), who prefers to be known as “J,” re-meets his grandmother (Jacki Weaver), and uncles Darren who is just a few years older than himself, Craig, and the currently hiding Pope (Ben Mendelsohn) who seems to suffer from bipolarity or ADHD or something that involves meds he is not taking. It is Pope who is the wild card in the family, creating problems and conflicts among the others for his own benefit (which none of the others seem to see). Also in the group is Barry Brown (Joel Edgerton), a cohort who hangs out often at the house.


J is observant and pretty soon he is compromised in a late night crime, causing a police detective Leckie (Guy Pearce) to home in on him as a potential weak link/witness. While he doesn’t exactly prey on J to go against his family, he does try to convince him of the family’s self-survival and lack of loyalty to him as well as the potential criminal record he might have, which causes J to waver between protecting himself or honoring so-called family bonds. Leckie is also a bit of a father figure, offering real life advice about his situation where his uncles do not.

When I first watched this I knew Jacki Weaver as the grandmother would no doubt get some attention due to the lines she has been given, making her a very Lady Macbeth (without the guilt)/Machiavellian character who puts her sons above all else. You do see how she and the uncles are pretty screwed up as to their sense of morals and values (no mention is made of what happened to the fathers in this extended family). It’s like she and Pope have a bit of brain that is missing that controls their morals; it’s not that they are or aren’t, they just lack it. They are not the type that have a thieves’ honor code or anything like that. Nothing and no one is sacred to them although there is no backstory to explain any of this. Pope’s behavior is partially explained by his medical problem. Darren’s is somewhat explained by him being the youngest in the family (bullied or controlled), but the others are not in the movie long enough for us to form much of an opinion of them. Also, there is no explanation of the inter-family relationships. Like Pope, I can’t believe his manipulative behavior has gone unnoticed for such a long time, I can imagine as kids there were squabbles or grudges that lasted into their adult relationships but it doesn’t show in the film.

The major violence often happens off-screen or at a distance which I thought was curious for a film about these violent immoral people. Not quite as good as I thought it would be, because I don’t think it went far enough/dark enough (even though grandma and Pope do evil things, not just criminal things like the others), nor explained who these people really are. Maybe that is meant to reflect J’s involvement, he has no sense of relating to these people so the film doesn’t allow us to do so either.