An architect's fight for integrity

   Few filmmakers -- Paul Thomas Anderson may be one -- make movies that seem to live and breathe in worlds of their own. The Brutalist, director Brady Corbet's three-hour and 15-minute foray into the life of a fictional Jewish Hungarian architect qualifies as such a movie. Like the architectural style for which it's named, The Brutalist can be raw and abrasive, a story blanched of sentiment.

   A movie as ambitious as The Brutalist puts a tremendous burden on the actor (Adrien Brody) who'll play architect László Toth, a refugee who arrives in the US in 1947 after being separated from his wife (Felicity Jones) and orphaned niece (Raffey Cassidy).

    Stuck in an immigration limbo, Toth's wife and niece still languish in Europe, but Toth perseveres in the face of a displacement the movie makes clear with his arrival in New York City. A cockeyed shot of the Statue of Liberty signals that neither Toth nor we have reached a mythic land of liberty and justice. 

     But Toth’s not arriving in the America of historical realism, either. He lands in the world Corbet and his co-writer,  Mona Fastvoid, create, a world full of striving and duplicity, as well as opportunities for reinvention. 

     The movie, which shows with a 15-minute intermission, divides into two acts and an epilogue that allow Corbet steadily to open thematic doors. Among them:  capitalism’s inevitable perversion of art, the fierce individuality needed to protect artistic integrity, and the abiding agony of surviving events that never can be left behind. 

       Early on, Toth moves in with a cousin (Alessandro Nivola) who lives in Pennsylvania with his American wife (Emma Laird). Nivola's Attila seems to have shed his Old Country past, even converting to Catholicism. Toth designs furniture for the shop Attila owns, a dim connection to his previous life but still a creative endeavor.

     The story shifts gears when the cheerfully opportunistic Attila puts Laszlo in touch with Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn), the son of a wealthy tycoon (Guy Pearce). Harry wants to surprise his father by renovating the library where Dad houses his rare book collection.

   Laszlo makes the library into a design-oriented space that takes the rarity of the books into account. He designs shelves that turn to shield the books from the sun. 

    When he arrives home, Pearce's character -- an infuriated Harrison Lee Van Buren — tosses Laszlo and Attila out of his home. He hates the library, which, for him, has one only purpose: to  display his taste and purported erudition. 

    A reporter for Look magazine discovers the library and proclaims it as the masterwork of a genius whose career was disrupted by war and the Holocaust. Van Buren recants. He pays Laszlo for his work, and invites him to design a community-oriented art and spiritual center for the suburban town of Doylestown, Pa.

    The plot's density increases. Laszlo moves into quarters on Van Buren's estate. His wife and niece return to him. He continues a heroin addiction that began as a way to cope with an injury, and his relationship with Van Buren wobbles, leading to a jarring and metaphorically strained act of sexual violence during a trip the men make to Carrara to select marble for the chapel's altar. 

    I’m not sure that The Brutalist makes groundbreaking statements about art, America, or the incorporation of new populations into the American tapestry. Toth’s Judaism remains, but isn't deeply explored. Corbet introduces a Black character (Isaach De Bankole) who becomes part of Toth's orbit, but whose story proves minimal.

      Limitations aside, Corbet's characters are among the year's most vividly realized and distinctive, offering Brody, Pearce, and Jones opportunities for  major performances. Together, director and cast create moments that prove provocative, fresh, and artfully imagined. 

       You may remember the movie as if it were dream, not entirely graspable but notable for its lingering power.

   

Bob's Cinema Diary: 11/20/20 -- 'The Last Vermer' and 'The Sound of Metal'

The Last Vermeer

In The Last Vermeer, Guy Pearce plays Han van Meegeren, a notorious Dutch art forger who famously sold a fake Vermeer to Nazi bigwig Hermann Goring during World War II. Director Dan Friedkin centers his movie on a post-war accusation: Van Meegeren, Dutch authorities argued, betrayed his country by selling a national treasure to Goring. Van Meegeren concocted an unusual defense: He hadn't sold a Vermeer to a Nazi: He sold a forgery that he skillfully had painted. The story focuses on a Dutch Jew (Claes Bang) who, at the end of the war, serves in the Canadian army. His job: to root out those among the Dutch who collaborated with the Nazis. Initially convinced of van Meegeren's guilt, Bang's character comes to understand that the man was a gifted art mimic who had engineered a colossal fraud. Sincere and stalwart, Bang's Capt. Joseph Piller gets crosswise with a Dutch investigator (August Diehl) who's eager to put van Meegeren in front of a firing squad. The movie flirts with issues involving the complex behaviors that emerged as the Dutch tried to survive the Nazis. Piller fled into the underground: His wife (Marie Bach Hansen) made compromises to survive. Though it veers from the real story, The Last Vermeer remains fascinating for Pearce's portrayal of a man of enormous ego and moral flexibility, a character who contrasts mightily with the dour Piller. It's also sobering to know that a gifted forger can fool even those who are recognized as experts.

 Sound of Metal

In Sound of Metal, Riz Ahmed plays a punk-rock drummer who may have lost his hearing as a result of exposure to ear-splitting levels of noise. The movie isn't definitive about what caused Ahmed's Ruben to lose his hearing, but a musician who can't hear obviously finds himself at a great disadvantage. A recovering addict, Ruben is intent on regaining his hearing by way of cochlear implants, which are expensive and beyond his immediate financial reach. Ruben's girlfriend (Olivia Cooke) insists that he check into a facility run by a deaf Vietnam vet (Paul Raci) who trains people to live with their deafness. Raci's Joe doesn't view deafness as a disability but as a gateway to different forms of communication. Director Darius Marder creates a sound design that frequently mirrors Rubin's perspective. Ahmed creates a character whose nervous energies  and anxieties give the story a jittery edge. The movie ultimately leaves it to us to decide whether implants or adjustment to a life of deafness makes the most sense for Ruben. Marder reaches for    metaphor as Joe encourages Ruben to find the still, quiet place in himself, something that clearly has eluded a life marked by addiction, drumming and frantic movement. Whatever you think about Ruben's choice, you find yourself wondering how much of the noise that surrounds us really is worth hearing.

A royal rivalry that needed more fire

Mary Queen of Scots can't bring its intriguing ingredients to a dramatic boil.

Mary Queen of Scots tells a story that drips with political intrigue, religious strife, personal betrayals, and even murder.

Despite all that and despite a couple of winning performances from Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie, the movie too often fails to bring its many volatile ingredients to a dramatic boil.

The story centers on the rivalry between Ronan's Mary and Robbie's Elizabeth I. Newly widowed at 18, Mary arrives in Scotland from France, where she evidently learned the art of tolerance. Surrounded by her all-male gaggle of courtiers, Elizabeth fears that Mary won't be content to rule over Scotland, but will try to take over her throne, as well.

Director Josie Rourke, working from a screenplay by Beau Willimon (House of Cards), alternates between the 16th-century British and Scottish courts, making clear -- in somewhat interminable fashion -- the contrasts between the two women.

As for those differences: Mary is Catholic; Elizabeth, a Protestant. Mary seems the more natural and fresh-faced of the two with Elizabeth, who contracts a terrible case of the pox during the movie, looking as puffed and powdered as a show poodle.

Ronan brings youth, intelligence and plenty of backbone to the role of Mary. Robbie's make-up threatens to overwhelm her performance, but she manages to allow real feelings to creep through.

In what might be taken as a bow to current sensibilities, both Mary and Elizabeth preside over multi-racial 16th-century courts. There's also gay sex, oral sex and lots of grumbling courtiers, some of whom make an impression, notably Guy Pearce's William Cecil, an advisor to Elizabeth and an all-around stuffed shirt.

James McArdle portrays Mary's hirsute half-brother. Ismael Cruz Cordova plays a gay man who likes to hang with Mary and her crew of gentle-ladies and who also has a roll in the hay with Mary's second husband (Jack Lowden). David Tennant portrays John Knox, a Scottish zealot who rails against Mary's Catholicism and what he sees as her sexual abandon.

For those unfamiliar with British history, the movie makes it clear from the outset how all this back and front-stabbing will conclude. Rourke begins with Mary's impending beheading and works her way back through the story.

Scotland looks far more primitive than Elizabeth's London court but the movie's glamor has more to do with the two queen's architectural hairstyles than with any aristocratic splendor.

And it may be a nod to current standards to suggest that Mary and Elizabeth shared a sisterly fate as the men of their respective courts attempt to push them around.

Mary Queen of Scots doesn't have the musty feel of period-bound drama but it doesn't spring to vivid life, either. So, no hails for this queen.

By the way, and of no relevance whatsoever, I'm waiting for someone to use this title as inspiration for another movie, namely Mary Scot of Queens Tell me you aren't ready for it.

'Equals' adds up to boredom

Welcome to another dystopian future. Although it surely wasn't intended, director Drake Doremus' Equals goes a long way toward providing an effective cure for insomnia. A deeply boring romance between two characters who live in a futuristic society where emotions are suppressed for the good of something called "the Collective," Equals suffers from a pervasive lack of verve. In the movie's world, people aren't supposed to touch. Humans still propagate, but conception has been turned into a chore. Not everyone in this society has managed to stamp out feeling, though. Some have been diagnosed with SOS (Switched On Syndrome). Most SOS people eventually are eliminated, but a few pretend to abide by The Collective's norms. They're called "hiders." Nicholas Hoult plays a diagnosed victim of SOS who falls for a "hider" portrayed by Kristen Stewart. Let's just say that their love affair plumbs new depths of listlessness. Guy Pearce and Jacki Weaver offer minimal support as two additional "hiders," those who fake the numbed-out look that their society requires. Doremus floods the screen with whites (interiors and clothing), a choice that only adds to the monotony. Some end-of-picture suspense ignites a small spark, but, by then, it's too late. Rigor mortis already has set in.

A self-absorbed writer and his editor

Genius focuses on the relationship between Thomas Wolfe and Max Perkins.

Genius -- a movie starring Colin Firth, Jude Law and Nicole Kidman -- presents a handsomely mounted but somewhat tepid portrait of the relationship between volatile novelist Thomas Wolfe and his editor Max Perkins.

The gist of the story: Perkins, who also edited the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, tolerated Wolfe's alcoholic digressions and emotional outbursts because he believed in the author's talent.

In part, the movie suffers because time hasn't entirely justified Perkins' faith. Novels such as Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel don't command the widespread attention they once did.

Director Michael Grandage focuses the story on the Perkins/Wolfe relationship during the Depression years, a time when Perkins plied his trade at Scribner's. Wolfe would dump his colossus-sized manuscripts -- all written in pencil -- on Perkins' desk. Perkins then would work with the writer to whittle Wolfe's efforts to more manageable size.

When not ensconced in Perkins' Manhattan office, the movie visits his Connecticut home, where Laura Linney plays the mostly negligible role of Perkins' wife.

The point of these scenes may be to tell us that Perkins preferred the comforts of home and hearth -- he had five daughters -- to the roller coaster ride taken by those who more directly stoke their creativity fires.

Wearing an ever-present fedora, Firth inhabits the character of Perkins with ease and quiet grace, although his performance can feel a trifle sparkless. As the ebullient, life-embracing Wolfe, Law compensates for Perkins' preternatural calm with emphatic expressions of energy.

Wolfe's relationship with a married woman, Kidman's Mrs. Bernstein, mostly demonstrates the devastating consequences of Wolfe's boundless self-absorption.

Grandage's wan drama might have been better had Wolfe's work retained the regard still given to Fitzgerald and Hemingway, played in cameos by Guy Pearce and Dominic West respectively.

Otherwise, Genius -- based on a 1978 biography of Perkins by A. Scott Berg -- needed something that Perkins probably would have insisted on had edited movies instead of books: the infusion of enough urgency to prevent both period and characters from feeling trapped in the past -- as if they're being suffocated by a sepia-hued fog.

Another brutal, unforgiving world

Director David Michod made a striking debut with Animal Kingdom (2010), an uncompromising look at a family of low-level Melbourne criminals.

Now comes Michod's second movie, The Rover, a grim journey through a trashed-out world that has emerged after an economic catastrophe rendered the outback (and perhaps the rest of the globe) lawless.

With actor Robert Pattinson trying hard to put Twilight behind him and Guy Pearce doing his best to feign numbed indifference in the face of unrestrained violence, Michod's grit-laden march across the outback becomes a movie that's all dressed down with no place to go. The Rover itself can seem like an exercise in futility.

Unshaven and scuzzy looking, Pearce plays Eric, a brooding loner who sets out to capture three gun-toting felons who have stolen his car. As he travels from one arid location to the next, Eric comes across the wounded Rey (Pattinson), a dim-witted fellow who happens to be the brother of one of the men who stole the sought-after car.

Rey was left behind in whatever skirmish the trio had engaged in before taking flight.

Speaking with a southern accent that adds to the movie's hodgepodge of types (blacks, Asians and whites), Pattinson creates a character of skittish energy, a kid with traces of innocence clinging to him like the Australian dirt. Pattinson has been de-prettified for the role, complete with teeth in bad need of dentistry.

Believing that Rey can help him track the felonious trio, Eric saves the wounded man's life, and then brings him along as a guide and for some quiet scenes in which Eric parcels out a bit of background.

The movie becomes an exercise in brutal minimalism, but one that's drained of the kind of thematic vitality that would have redeemed its barren tone. It's also a little too eager to prove how awful life has become.

At one point -- for example -- Eric needlessly kills a dwarf from whom he's attempting to purchse a revolver. Oh well, what's a guy to do when someone tries to overcharge for a weapon and there's no Better Business Bureau in sight?

Michod includes some memorable touches. Most notable among them: The image of an upside down vehicle skimming across the surface of a road, as seen through the window of a bar in which the obviously worn-out Eric sits.

Part of the mystery, to the extent that there is any, has to do with why Eric would expend so much energy to retrieve his vehicle, particularly when one destination seems no different from the next.

Fashionably devoid of hope, The Rover isn't subtle about taking us into an anarchic world where decency has been forgotten, a theme that's reinforced by Antony Partos's weirdly pounding score, the aural equivalent of body blows.

Despite the talent that's on display here, The Rover becomes a been-there, done-that exercise in atmospherics that reminds us how quickly life can be reduced to a quest for brute survival.

A cogent reading of reality?

Nah, just one more plunge into the rot of one more big-screen dystopia.

Kirsten Wiig gets serious

Hateship Loveship proves punchless.

Hateship Loveship -- one of several recent movies that has been available on VOD prior to reaching theaters -- proves a restrained but imperfect attempt to turn an Alice Munro short story into a feature-length movie.

Hateship Loveship surrounds Kristen Wiig -- in a serious role -- with some fine supporting talent, notably Nick Nolte, Hailee Steinfeld and Guy Pearce.

Wiig plays Johanna, a woman who embarks on a new adventure after the elderly woman she has been working for dies. Isolated for much of her life, Johanna becomes a kind of housemaid and nanny to Mr. McCauley (Nolte) and his recalcitrant teen-age granddaughter Sabitha (Steinfeld).

The plot engages when one of Sabitha's friends (Sami Gayle) decides to play a prank on Johanna, setting up an affectionate e-mail correspondence between Johanna and Pearce's Ken, Sabitha's drug-addicted father. Ken's contributions to this dialogue are composed by Gayle's Edith.

Acting on what she believes to be her one chance for love, lonely Johanna travels to Chicago and moves in with Ken, who resides in a rundown motel that he makes noises about renovating.

Half spooky and half sincere, Wiig proves convincing as a woman who knows next to nothing about the world and its rules.

Gradually, Johanna takes over Ken's life: She sees hope where we see nothing but potential doom.

To worm her way into Ken's world, the emotionally underdeveloped Johanna must displace Chloe (Jennifer Jason Leigh), one of Ken's junkie pals.

Director Liza Johnson, working from a script by Mark Poirier, files off the story's rougher edges, which has the effect of making Loveship Hateship entirely too easy to shrug off.

What could have been a tender little movie seems little more than a curiosity: Wiig in a role without a comic side.

The fireworks of 'Iron Man 3'

The finale is explosive, but this installment of Iron Man is not without dull spots.
What must Iron Man 3 accomplish? Must the flawed superhero of Marvel Comics fame save the world from the evil machinations of terrorism-prone villain? Must he somehow reconcile the fragility of his humanity with powers bestowed on him when he dons his protective iron suit? Or must he navigate his way through an early summer mega-movie that might be deemed a dud if it doesn't outdo its predecessors at the box office?

Iron Man 3 seems to want to accomplish all of the above goals, throwing in an explosion that demolishes Grauman's Chinese Theatre in the bargain. A metaphor for the way the movie's supposed to explode at the box office or a bit of bad-taste, post-Aurora pyrotechnics? Decide for yourself.

So, the plusses: The action set pieces of the movie's finale are scaled to impress and include CGI work that leaves you marveling at its undisguised audacity.

The minuses: Iron Man 3 makes you suffer through some significant longueurs before it crosses its 130-minute finish line. The movie's end-of-picture rewards are tempered by mid-picture sags and talky stagnation.

Robert Downey Jr. does everything you'd expect of him in his third Iron Man outing. Iron Man -- who spends a lot of time out of his suit in this episode -- is lightning fast with a retort. He's amusing, especially to himself.

In the movie's early scenes, Iron Man, a.k.a. Tony Stark, is mired in a personal crisis. He can't sleep. He's having anxiety attacks. He's puttering around his laboratory with obsessive fervor, trying to figure out how to make parts of his Iron Man suit leap from the ground and attach to his body. He's also neglecting his relationship with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow).

Director Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) has been assigned the job of following Iron Man through his psychological malaise. Black, who also wrote the Lethal Weapon movies, assumes the franchise's helm to mixed effect, perhaps because he has limited experience with the heavy-lifting required to direct an effects-laden mega-movie.

Still, there are sights to be seen. A prime example: The finale includes a spectacular airborne rescue in which Iron Man saves 13 officials who've been jettisoned from a plane. Good stuff, but the main enticements of this third installment arrive in the form of tasty side dishes.

Ben Kingsley plays a terrorist called The Mandarin, a villain who evokes scary echoes of Osama bin Laden. Rebecca Hall, not the first actress who springs to mind when you think about franchise movies, makes a nice addition as one of Tony Stark's former girlfriends. And Iron Man finds a bit of temporary companionship in an eight-year-old kid (Ty Simpkins), who joins him for mid-picture plot duties.

Guy Pearce signs on as Aldrich Killian, an evil entrepreneur who mutates into a scorching, fiendish Iron Man foe. Pearce seems to be having as good a time as can be had with a sadistic -- if slightly off-the-rack -- villain.

One thing's sure: After this installment, Iron Man's going to need a new home. Early on, he's blasted out of his cliff-hugging Malibu home. This can't sit well with Paltrow's Pepper Potts, the woman who shares Iron Man's residence. Perhaps she's consoled by being Iron Man's main squeeze, although Paltrow's straight-shooting Potts seldom proves as interesting as Hall's morally ambiguous Maya Hansen.

Iron Man 3 is one of those critic-proof movies that has enough successful bits and pieces to keep general audiences and fanboys reasonably well-satisfied.

For me, the movie proved enjoyable in the same way that fireworks are fun. Moments of waiting are punctuated by vivid bursts of action and color that vanish into the night sky leaving only wisps of smoke to grasp at as we await the arrival of the next blockbuster. Iron Man 3 makes plenty of noise, but its pleasures are spectacularly insubstantial.

Tale of bootleggers has genre kick

Lawless has the look of a great movie, but its rewards have more to do with its hard-core attitudes..

Set in the early 1930s, Lawless tells the story of a clan of bootlegging brothers who rose to prominence in Franklin County, Va. Working from a novel by Matt Bondurant, director John Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave try for the bracingly bitter tone of a Depression-era story that sometimes feels as if it's out to recycle a variety of familiar western and gangster ploys.

In this case, three moonshining brothers face off against a corrupt lawman. Bondurant's novel, by the way, derives from his family history, and the movie begins with a title card telling us that it's inspired by a true story.

In Lawless, Hillcoat (The Road ) focuses on Jake Bondurant (Shia LaBeouf), the youngest of three Bondurant brothers and the tale's narrator. The Bondurants are hard-core moonshiners led by Forrest Bondurant (Tom Hardy). Brother Howard Bondurant (Jason Clarke) brings muscle to the proceedings. Jack is considered "the runt" of the Bondurant litter, a young man not naturally given to violence.

In this case, the bootleggers aren't the bad guys. That job falls squarely on the shoulders of Guy Pearce, who pushes the limits of stereotype as Charlie Rakes, a citified sadist of a lawman who travels to Virginia from Chicago. Rakes has been hired to enforce a system of payoffs to local officials.

Fiercely committed to controlling his own affairs, Forrest refuses to play ball with the local pols, and the building blocks fall into place for a story that turns white-lightning outlaws into advocates for untrammeled independence.

Lawless boasts an impressive supporting cast. Gary Oldman has a small role as Floyd Banner, a Tommy-gun toting gangster. Jessica Chastain shows up as a red-headed refugee from Chicago, a woman with a checkered past who hopes find a little peace in a small town. Chastain's Maggie has an eye for Forrest, who -- as played by the stoically impressive Hardy -- seems as immovable as a tree stump.

When Forrest thinks or speaks, he tends to start with a murmured growl that sounds as if it's somewhere between a sigh and grunt. He's the brutal brains and backbone of the Bondurant brothers' thriving booze business. Hardy, who gave one of the bravura performances of cinema in the British movie Bronson, remains an impressive actor whose very presence can seem like a threat. When he really wants to make a point, Forrest uses a set of brass knuckles.

Working with cinematographer Benoît Delhomme, Hillcoat gives his images a romanticized burnish, but when the screenplay calls for brutality, the director presents it with full force. The action builds toward a showdown between the Bondurants and Rakes at a covered bridge.

LaBeouf doesn't always seem perfectly cast as a young man who has an eye for a preacher's daughter (Mia Wasikowska), but he has his moments. LaBeouf's Jack lacks the killer instinct of his tougher brothers, a deficiency that sets up one of the movie's big (and all-too-obvious) questions. Will Jake be able to pull the trigger when the chips are down?

In the end, Lawless comes across as an artfully made genre piece that seems to have been aiming for quite a bit more: It's not in a class with Hillcoat and Cave's previous collaboration, The Proposition, an astringent western set in the Australian outback.

You also may find yourself wondering about the moral calculus that turns the brutal Bondurant boys into heroes. Still, there's a wistful air of longing about this violent movie, an attempt to hold onto a robust moment of Bondurant family history, even if that moment doesn't quite rise to the level of legend.

Lockout's no knockout

For roughly half its 95-minute length, Lockout seems like a low-stakes B-movie that breaks little new ground, but demands so little by way of heightened attention that it almost comes as a relief. There's something liberating about a decent B-movie, the sense that we can accept it for what it is: fast-paced junk. With Lockout, though, familiar plotting, bad dialog and a ton of cynical posturing eventually deplete the movie's fun quotient. This Luc Besson-produced effort casts Guy Pearce as a grizzled, cigarette-smoking former CIA agent who's sent to an outer-space prison to rescue the daughter (Maggie Grace) of the president of the United States. Grace's Emilie Warnock is on a fact-finding mission at the prison -- known as MS One -- when all hell breaks loose. The inmates break from the deep-sleep state of stasis in which they're being held, and take over the prison. Stasis is supposed to put an end to prison violence, but also may be involved in research that's exploiting the prisoners. Set in 2079, the story imagines a time when life has become so dangerous, the president's Oval Office has been moved underground. Pearce does his best to handle the screenplay's overly-flippant dialog, and Vincent Regan projects sinister intelligence as an inmate leader, but Lockout isn't exactly an actors' showcase. Directed by James Mather and Stephen St. Leger, Lockout finds Pearce and Grace running for their lives for most of the movie as they try to avoid ruthless convicts and seek an escape route from the prison. If you're squeamish, you'll want to close your eyes during a scene in which Pearce's Snow must put a needle into one of Emily's eyes. I'm always up for a hard-boiled hunk of futuristic dystopia, but Lockout ultimately disappoints. What starts as second-rate fun winds up being just second rate.

A brilliant Australian rumble in the jungle

Grandma knows best ... or does she?
If there’s a false note in director David Michod’s riveting Animal Kingdom, I didn’t detect it. This Australian debut movie enters a crime world unlike most others we’ve seen. Working with a terrific cast, Michod penetrates the closed world of one Melbourne family, building a climate of excitement and dread.

Now, we’re not talking a crime family a la the Sopranos. We’re talking about a clan of blood relatives who treat the world – and sometimes one another – as a jungle full of prey. Take the movie's title seriously.

I don’t know if the filmmakers thought about it, but Animal Kingdom might just be the perfect movie for our moment of economic gloom and frantic competition. When the going gets tough, people aren’t always inclined to extend a helping hand, unless it’s to put it into your pocket. I may be reading too much into this narrowly focused, grimly targeted movie, but I see it as a mean movie for a mean time.

The story centers on Josh (James Frecheville), a 17-year-old who moves in with his grandmother after his mother dies of a heroin overdose, expiring while the two are watching a game show on TV. As played by Australian stage actress Jacki Weaver, grandma enters a pantheon of crime mamas that includes Cody Jarrett’s Mom (Margaret Wycherly) in James Cagney’s White Heat. High praise, I know, but Weaver’s Janine Cody is an instant classic.

Sweetly and inappropriately seductive with her three sons – evidently each with a different father – Weaver’s Janine has a smile that masks a deadly disposition. As played by Weaver, nothing about this grandma is clichéd or easy. She’s not out to charm the audience with faux toughness; she’s portraying a character whose affections can turn on a dime without evincing the slightest change in demeanor.

Frecheville plays Josh – known as “J” – without a great deal of expression. That’s the right choice. Josh is navigating his way through a world he knows is dangerous, and he’s never entirely sure how he fits into it or even if he wants to adapt. Like everyone else in the film, he’s also scared to death of his uncle Pope, played with incomparable menace by Ben Mendelsohn.

To his credit, Michod – who also wrote the screenplay – never drifts into caricature or cliché. Pope occasionally makes sincere efforts to reach out to his nephew, but he’s ill equipped to make good on offers to become a sounding board. Besides, no one trusts Pope enough to turn him into a confidant.

Although the plot revolves around revenge, the movie has less to do with gangster exploits than with the struggle for power inside the movie’s well-drawn "animal" kingdom, a domain that includes the Melbourne cops. Guy Pearce plays a detective who offers Josh protection, understanding that the kid has only two choices: He can rely on his uncles or on Pearce’s Detective Leckie. Both choices have advantages and disadvantages, and it’s up to Josh to figure out how best to survive his foray into this jungle of murderous rage, personal weakness and craven self-interest.

Luke Ford and Sullivan Stapleton sign on as Josh’s other two uncles, and Laura Wheelwright portrays Josh’s girlfriend, a young woman ensnared by the cruelties of a world that she’s ill equipped to understand. When Josh visits Laura’s house, we see how far outside the norm his life has moved.

Michod does nothing to glamorize these criminals. He also understands that their world is fraught with fear – of one another and of the society at large. He uses music effectively, and, just as importantly, knows when not to use it. (Notice the scene in which the brothers ambush a squad car as payment for the death of one of their partners in crime. No music spoils the point-blank drama of the moment.)

Animal Kingdom is a dark, unhappy movie that bravely denies us the voyeuristic pleasure that most crime movies offer. We can feel as trapped as Josh by this unseemly band of brothers, and we fear for his fate at their hands.

There are so many good scenes and so much fine acting in Animal Kingdom that you needn’t fret over the occasional line of lost dialogue, the disappearance of words inside the thick Melbourne accents. You can’t miss the gist or the skill with which Michod brings this grim tale to life.