Before You See the New TV Show 'Animal Kingdom,' Watch the Aussie Crime Drama That Inspired It
(Photo: Everett Collection)
The great Ellen Barkin revival officially begins Tuesday at 9 p.m., when TNT launches its new SoCal crime drama Animal Kingdom, a 10-episode adaptation of the acclaimed 2010 Australian film. (The movie is available to rent or purchase on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.) Advance reviews have already singled out the Sea of Love star as being the main attraction of this film-to-TV translation, which casts Barkin as the matriarch of an outlaw clan that’s involved in all manner of illegal activity in the sun-dappled surf town of Oceanside, CA. Keeping her grown sons/enforcers in line with stern, sexuality-laced mothering, Barkin’s Smurf is a potent mixture of Mama Fratelli and June Cleaver, and the actress fluidly moves between both sides of her personality: devoted mother and career criminal.
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Barkin is the second performer to get a career bump from playing Smurf. Director David Michôd’s film version heralded the return of Australian actress Jacki Weaver to the big screen after a prolonged absence. One of the nation’s most famous leading ladies in the ‘70s and ‘80s — her credits include Peter Weir’s acclaimed Picnic at Hanging Rock and the Down Under box office hit, Alvin Purple — Weaver turned to the stage as film roles grew fewer and far between.
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But Animal Kingdom thrust her back into the spotlight in a big way, earning her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress and roles in such Hollywood films as Silver Linings Playbook and The Five Year Engagement. “[David] says he wrote it for me,” Weaver told Cinema Blend in 2011. “He had a great vision. He knew what he wanted, but he didn’t behave like a puppeteer. A lot of directors want to storyboard you, whereas the best way to get a performance out of an actor is a collaborative process.”
As Weaver’s onscreen family, Ben Mendelsohn and Sullivan Stapleton — as well as Joel Edgerton, who plays a family friend and accomplice — also benefitted from the critical and commercial success of Animal Kingdom. In the six years since the film’s premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, all three have become fixtures in American film and television. Their intense competition for Smurf’s favor is what drives the family’s criminal enterprise, while also sealing its eventual doom.
(Photo: Everett Collection)
In an interview with NPR, Michôd compared Animal Kingdom to the third act of Martin Scorsese’s classic Goodfellas, when Henry Hill’s high-flying mobster lifestyle self-destructs in spectacular fashion. In this particular story, the characters’ downfall begins when Smurf’s orphaned teenage grandson Joshua (James Frecheville) comes to live with the family, wholly unaware of the nest of vipers he’s settling down with. While his uncles Craig (Stapleton) and Darren (Luke Ford) accept him, Andrew (Mendelsohn) is violently opposed to his presence, particularly after the death of two cops brings their family to the renewed attention of the Melbourne police department.
As the title suggests, a kill-or-be-killed atmosphere suffuses Animal Kingdom, as the strong prey on the weak, at least until they’re brought down by their own hubris. It’s a dark-hearted look at the underbelly of Australian society that puts it in the prestigious company of such cult classics as 1971’s Wake in Fright and 1992’s Romper Stomper. Thankfully, that grittiness is preserved in the television version, which paints a compellingly seedy portrait of its SoCal locations. If you like what you see of TNT’s menagerie of miscreants, make sure to visit Australia’s Animal Kingdom on Amazon, iTunes or Vudu. It’s a bracing, bloody yarn with performances that are so good, it’s criminal.
