When his mother dies from an overdose of heroin, 17-year-old Joshua ‘J’ Cody moves in with his grandma and her three criminal sons. Andrew ‘Pope’ tries to keep out of the hands of a team of detectives, while Craig successfully deals drugs. Darren does his best to follow in the footsteps of his big brothers.
But then one of them is shot by a cop, precisely at the moment when Andrew’s business partner Barry Brown announces he wants to retire. What follows is a fierce sequence of reprisals between the Mafiosi and the police.
Despite the explosive violence, in his ambitious feature debut the Australian director David Michôd focuses on the human drama behind the criminal. A star cast including Ben Mendelsohn, Jacki Weaver, Guy Pearce and James Frecheville communicates deep and complex emotions with subtle acting. Each twist in the plot comes as a surprise in this layered, dark crime drama.
Film details
- Country of production
- Australia
- Year
- 2010
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2011
- Length
- 113'
- Medium/Format
- 35mm
