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Dec 13, 2014Nursebob rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
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!