An Australian caper movie about a trio of criminal brothers, Scott Roberts's debut feature is an unstable mixture of abrasive comedy, sluttish eroticism and hard-edged violence. Despite the fact that their criminal trademark is performing daring robberies without anyone getting hurt, there is plenty of vicious blood-letting before this tale is told.
The brothers are inseparable, whether on the streets or behind bars. As the youngest of the Twentyman siblings, Shane (Joel Edgerton) explains to his besotted counsellor: "Dale is the smart one. Mal is the good one. And I am the f**k-up."
Following a series of heists set up by their slippery lawyer, Frank Malone (Robert Taylor), in conjunction with a brace of corrupt cops, the brothers are biding their time in jail until the next gig. Sprung to rob a security van, Dale (Guy Pearce) is alarmed to discover that his flirtatious wife, Carol (Rachel Griffiths), is conducting a clandestine affair with Malone.
Betrayal is in the air, particularly when, having carried out the robbery successfully, the brothers find that their get-out-of-jail card has expired and Malone is experiencing problems cutting his usual deal to free them.
Malone offers them a deal. One more big score and they can all retire. His plan is for them to knock off the bookies after Australia's biggest annual horse race, the Melbourne Cup - a caper that could net them close to $20 million. But here, the movie comes adrift.
The gang, augmented much to the brothers' reluctance by two outsiders - a dyslexic black gunman called Tarzan and a weasly assassin called Paul - spend little time planning and a lot of time running through the relatively deserted streets of Melbourne with huge bags of loot without police interference.
During the robbery, Tarzan ("I like guns") shoots several people before having his head blown off, which rather spoils the brothers' record of nonviolent criminality. But the plot is less important than digressions into the brothers' "family" life and forays into relationships.
Shane's institutionalised seduction of his counsellor (Rhondda Findleton) is quirkily erotic, while gentle Mal (Damien Richardson) has a brief, glorious fling with Pamela (Kate Atkinson), whose car they commandeer in their escape from the racetrack.
As Dale's errant wife, Griffiths is all wet-look lips and glow-in-the-dark fingernails and, together with her blonde wig, is a shallow cousin of those highly sexed femmes fatales of the Forties and Fifties played by Barbara Stanwyck or Gloria Grahame. It is a messily enjoyable movie with a distinctive Australian flavour, right up to the denouement, which mischievously links the merry band of brothers with one of the biggest true-life robberies in Australian history.
Good fun for strong stomachs.
The Hard Word
Cert: cert18
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