Animal Kingdom

This is an Australian gangster film, although it is not made in the style that we expect for a gangster film. It concerns a family of brothers, all gangsters, ladied over by their mother, a plausibly appealing person, the moral part of who's psyche is missing. These guys don't wear suits, Godfather style, but lounge around the family bungalow seedily flaunting their tattoos, or in casual clothes. The story develops into a vendetta between them and the Melbourne police, after one of the brothers is shot by a policeman, and they shoot a couple of policemen in revenge. We see all this through the eyes of a young cousin who is sent to live with them after his mother dies of a drug overdose.

The film reminds me of Robert Aldrich's The Grissom Gang in that it is about a family gang run by the mother. Animal Kingdom is a very well-made film, with the camera frequently tracking slowly along the floor, or by a wall, as though peeping into the events of this family. These movements are accompanied by blocks of atonal music on the soundtrack. The brothers are not wild-eyed crazies like those in, say, Ride The High Country or The Grissom Gang, but one remains aware that they are capable of anything, although one, Pope, at first appearing unremarkable, emerges as the worst of them all.

Source Code

This is a ridiculous and entertaining film. It is ridiculous because it has a story that doesn't bear examination and it is entertaining because it sweeps one along on an enjoyable ride. In the story some futuristic technology enables an eight-minute chunk of the past to be revisited and this is used to investigate a train that has been blown up to try to discover the bomber before he or she does something worse. So poor Jake Gyllenhaal, a military man fresh from Afghanistan, is sent back to the time of the bombing of the train to try to discover who did it. Having only eight minutes per try he needs a few goes, and, drawing on his Hollywood antecedents, he displays courage, resourcefulness and quickwittedness to nail the bomber.

The film, while being set in Chicago, was made largely in Montreal, and many of the names in the credits are French. It is however not short of Hollywood-style action, and has a Hollywood star, while seeming to he made on a fairly limited budget, with about three simple sets. Thankfully, he train crash is shown minimally, as though recreated in somone's firegrate. There is a woman, Michelle Monaghan, to provide romantic interest, and Gyllenhaal, although understandably pressed for time during his eight-minute visits, finds time to chat her up. There is also Vera Farmiga, who I fell in love with while watching Up In The Air, here playing his controller. Gyllenhall, I think, was on the train and is already dead (pleased don't ask me too many questions about this), and so the events, being in the past, are done and dusted. But again drawing on its Hollywood roots, the laws of physics are not permitted to stand between hero and fair maiden, and the girl, dead at the beginning of the film is alive at the end. Not too many questions, please.


This is the second film directed by Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie (no, I don't know why his name's not Duncan Bowie). His first film was another science fiction film, the well-received Moon. He clearly has a good future as a film director.