Sundance 2010: David Michod’s Animal Kingdom

Today must have been a fairly special day for David Michod — the filmmaker saw two of his works receive their world preem debuts. First Hesher was shown midday (he receives a co-screenwriter cred) and he directed my most anticipated film in Animal Kingdom – a crime drama that only confirms what I discovered with in his shorts films: we’ve got a major talent on our hands from Down Under. Now if only I could get this Air Supply song outta of my head.

I have plenty to say about the pic, but I’ll keep key details for further installments. Here are pics – we find veteran Australian actress Jacki Weaver is a card  a role which is important in the overall denouement of the film and which I won’t divulge here – but let’s just say her character is a trump card, potentially a joker in the deck, while Guy Pearce is a detective but not L.A. Confidential type mode – he almost plays against type…

…supporting players Ben Mendelsohn and Joel Edgerton add to the film’s tense tonality – I’ve yet to put my finger on just how this edginess is maintained – perhaps its how violence is depicted in the film…. 

Animal Kingdom marks James Frecheville’s big screen debut – he beat out another 500 applicants for the title role of J – where he plays a young adult who almost lives outside his own skin – what I can say is that our interest in the character increases as the timeline progresses.