[.ca] Romper Stomper

From Amazon.co.uk:
The burning intensity of Russell Crowe (L.A. Confidential) first lit up screens as a hate-filled, Mein Kampf-spouting skinhead in this brutal Australian drama. Crowe glowers from under his deep-set eyes as Hando, the creepy but charismatic leader of a racist gang who declares war on the Asian immigrants pouring into Melbourne. His rage erupts in violent attacks on the local Vietnamese community, but when his victims fight back his gang breaks up, and Hando flees the city with his best buddy Davey (Daniel Pollock) and redheaded hellion Gabe (Jacqueline McKenzie), a rich-girl runaway who turns the dynamic duo into a splintered love triangle. Writer-director Geoffrey Wright's matter-of-fact treatment of this subculture eschews social commentary for visceral immediacy. His portrait of white supremacist punks living like squatters on the fringes of Australian society is powered by coiled anger and simmering frustration, which finds its outlet in brutal fights and murderous rampages. The lack of moral position may bother some people, especially in light of Wright's sympathetic treatment of particular members of Hando's racist army, and the cold, hate-driven violence is sometimes hard to watch, but his vivid characters and richly drawn world create a compelling drama for adventurous filmgoers. --Sean Axmaker

not terrible, but not great either...:
Even though billed as a highly controversial portrayal of skinheads, this film really just uses skinhead subculture/violence as a backdrop; midway through it gets lost in a love triangle between the skinhead gang's leader (Russel Crowe) and his lieutenant/best-friend and a random blonde Crowe picks up in a bar. Crowe does a pretty good job in his breakthrough film, spouts neo-Nazi propaganda fairly convincingly every once in a while, but not quite the acting virtuosity of his later work. The violence is actually not all that atrocious---this is after all an Aussie production, and the Aussies just don't do celluloid violence anywhere as well as Hollywood does. (Bone-crunching, blood-splattering, in your face quasi 3-D violence on film is one of the few things America still does better than anybody else in the world.) You especially see this in the scene where the skinheads get overrun by a huge contingent of Vietnamese immigrants out to avenge their friends who were beaten up by the skins...the facial expressions, stunts, grunts, sound effects and fake combat often borders on comic cartoonish farce. Again, the main problem with this movie is it just doesn't stick to any one particular theme or conflict, but stumbles along from violence to sex to romance to drama and back to a little bit of violence. The last 10 minutes is more like a road movie than anything else. There is no consistent theme, tone, or focus. Overall it's a fairly entertaining 2 hours, but leaves you wanting. The director apparently lived with some actual skinheads for a couple of months prior to filming so he does try to capture much of their lingo, music, parties, etc. authentically...too bad the film as a whole just seems so staged and unreal.

Romper Stomper: A Skinhead's Perspective:
Let me start out by saying that I am a skinhead. I am not racist in the slightest(though I'm not a SHARP). Romper Stomper is a very accurate portrayal of skinheads and the lifestyle(particularly that of racist skins). The music, the fashion, the attitudes are all very authentic. This is a far better researched movie when compared to American History X. It is true that Romper Stomper only portrays skinheads as racists, but that is the story it is telling. American History X explicitly states that skinheads are all racist and that Oi! is a racist style of music(whatever that means). American History X's major flaw is its generalization of the lifestyle. Romper Stomper doesn't refute that nonracist skins exist, it just doesn't show that side. In fact, I believe that in the extras it even mentions that there are organizations such as SHARP(Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice). The skinhead lifestyle(racist or nonracist) has not changed much since 1969. Skinheads still wear Fred Perry shirts, bomber jackets, 501 Levis, steel-toe Doc boots, and thin braces(suspenders). They still shave their heads. Skinheads love their Oi! music just as much as they did in the 70's and 80's. So, for me, once you peel away the backdrop of racism and the skinhead lifestyle, the skeleton of the story is a very Shakespeare-esque tale of two friends being torn apart by a common love to the point of tragedy.

REDEFINES "RAW" AND COUCHES MORE THAN AN ETHNIC MESSAGE:
Filmed in gut-wrenching 16mm with a hand held, this is a courageously unsparing film of a neo-Nazi skinhead gang in Melbourne (Australia) obsessed with the danger they perceive in the growing population of Vietnamese immigrants. Although it has been criticized for "glorifying" skinheads and not taking a moral position against them, neither criticism is really well-founded. It is clear that the director and the actors made a great effort to get inside the characters, to make them human beings -- however repulsive -- and not simply caricatures. Still, the skinhead lifestyle depicted is mean, mindless, unromantic and, ultimately, pointless. Which becomes clear at the end when the leader (brilliantly played by Crowe) commits one final act of brutal bullying. What was their message really? Also, for all their posturing, they are mindless bullies, ganging up on isolated victims, and they are completely undone when faced with victims who join forces and fight back with the same intensity. By the end, all but one of the gang members is in jail or dead, which seems to me to be a pretty powerful moral statement. It is surely not perfect but it features genuinely terrifying performances of men totally twisted and misshapen by hatred, frustration and fear, yet capable of genuine affection and tenderness towards their best friends. I recommend renting this out if you have some appetite for gore and unflinching visuals.

Interesting movie.:
First and foremost, let me note to the reader that I would fit in with what many other reviewers have called "the subculture" (that is, essentially, neo-Nazi) depicted in the film, so if you want to pre-judge the objectivity of this review, do so now. Well, to begin, I give the movie four stars because, although it may appear at first glance to be shoddily put together or rough around the edges, both in story and in cinematography, I believe that all these things lend themselves to the portrait being painted by this film, whether consciously or unconsciously. The jerkiness of the camera, the over-crispness of the sound and the very contrasting colours and levels of light in the movie help to psychologically reinforce the atmosphere being created for the film. The silence contrasted by the crisp yet quiet dialogue, the very colourless frames and the bland environments of a rundown Melbourne industrial give the feeling of cold, hard and dark. In my opinion, the rough-edge photography and sound, as well as the grungy sounding musical score may upon initial inspection give the impression of being second rate (even by the standards of the day) or unpolished, when in reality, to "fix up" any such aspect of the movie would be ruining it. The film depicts neo-Nazi Skinheads living in a slum old car shop, eating fast food and drinking away their lack of jobs and purposes in life; if anything, fancy camera angles and well done-over sound with a sophisticated musical score would detract from this vital image. Personally, I do not believe, as some viewers believe, that the violence, the unfulfullment, the ruination and the utter hopelessness of the whole film from beginning to end is (or should be construed as) an attempt to demonstrate the alleged fallacy of the particular philosophy depicted in this movie. I believe that it is simply to depict the fallacy of living life as these particular Skinheads choose to live it. I for one know (and should rightly be in a position to, I might add), that the group depicted in Romper Stomper is not in the slightest characteristic of even close to half of any given population of Skinheads, although some countries seem to be havens for more antisocial misfits than others. The single fact that, regardless of any other considerations, the characters lacked any faith in their "convictions" made their situation all the more hopeless. Any good philosophy, in the hands of any good people, regardless of the specifics, will incite those people to rise up and be the best they can be, and in this I believe that not even propaganda spouting Hando can claim to be truly "enthused" by what he reads to himself out of his little brown Mein Kampf every day. Without conviction to a cause, rhetoric is useless in face of the fact that, perhaps, you don't have a job, or a home, or you have a drinking problem. This aspect more than any made Hando's character and the character of his Crew all the more believable. They were social rejects who were just looking for a cause to feel big about, they needed to be preached to and Hando needed somebody to listen as he repeated over and over something he picked up in his little brown book. Whether you are on my side or against it, or just not sure, I think everybody can relate to that in some way. Many Christians, although financially much better off than poor Hando and his Crew, are not much better spiritually. They read their Bible, act interested, but do not see the real wisdom which they believe is there. I believe, ultimately, that this is a morality tale, and should be taken in whatever way the viewer wishes to take it. This is the beauty of the film as-is, as opposed to, for instance, American History X or The Believer. Some people may be (somehow) offended by a lack of any "moral stand" taken against the violence or rhetoric of this movie, but I believe that this is a good thing also. I believe any movie which will tell you in the end what you must think about a particular issue or lifestyle, such as American History X, is wrong in doing so, and thus, it would be wrong for me to tell you what you must take out of this movie. Accept it as you may, in the end it is a story of how to lose everything quickly. As I said, whether you are racist or anti-racist or neutral, a sure way to send your life down the tubes is to follow the example set by Hando and his Crew, and this is universal truth, so regardless of what else you may take away from it, you should take this. If you do, regardless of whether you liked it, loved it or even hated it, then I believe the movie has done what it was supposed to do.

Accurate and Brutal:
If there is one thing that ticks me off, it's rascism and fascism. Early Skinheads were definately like this. However over the years, less and less rascist skinheads have been surfacing. Anyway, this movie is a very accurate portrayal of the skinheads, but it also has more than one plot going at once. The epic struggle of the skinheads v.s. the japanese, a skinhead restling with "what am I doing?" question, a girl who has been sexually used by her father, and how that same girl has split two former friend skinheads. It portrays they old lifestyle of drinking, premiscuous sex, drugs, fascism, and the brutal hate crimes they commit. In today's world, where movies are entertainment before anything else, there are fewer and fewer directors who dare to tackle unpleasant subjects. However, the real test of filmmaker's courage comes when unpleasant issues are approached from even less pleasant perspectives. Such efforts, especially in the climate of "political correctness", can often create public misunderstanding and controversies. Romper Stomper on the other hand is definately an accurate portrayal and does go after the unpleasant topics. The plot begins in Melbourne, town towards which flow the endless river of Asian, mostly Vietnamese, immigrants who gradually take over entire neighbourhoods. For many impoverished and unemployed white youths Asians are convenient explanation for their own misery, so some accepted the most extreme form of xenophobic racism and became skinheads. The small group led by charismatic Hando(played by Russell Crowe) is just one of many that fight a war for racial purity by mercilessly beating any Asian unfortunate to be in their proximity. After a while, Vietnamese decide that they had enough so they organise and start fighting back. Hando's group is suddenly faced with superior numbers and starts to fall apart. Hando and his lieutenant Davey (played by John Pollock) are forced to run from Melbourne in order to save their lives. The only assistance comes in the form of Gabe (played by Jacqueline Mackenzie), epileptic young woman from well-to-do family, but her presence would turn out to be the reason of Hando's final downfall. One of the most disturbing things of the film is the fact that a 12 year old skin head is shot in the head, in full view of the camera! Wright takes the hard route and shows skinheads through their own eyes. In the process the viewer is not only in position to be acquainted with very authentic-looking subculture of skinheads and their way of life. I recommend this film.