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#542 - Romper Stomper
Geoffrey Wright, 1992
A gang of Australian neo-Nazis get into a turf war with Vietnamese immigrants.
Romper Stomper is one of those films where the main draw comes from being immersed within a fringe sub-culture, even if it one as fundamentally unpleasant as that of neo-Nazi "skinheads". A young Russell Crowe stars as the leader of one such gang, ekeing out a meagre existence in the run-down Australian suburb of Footscray. When they're not busy harassing people of a different colour with their rampant xenophobia, they're too busy using unemployment checks to support their incredibly low-rent lifestyles that involve squatting, drinking, screwing, and whatever other cheap pleasures they can indulge. The balance gets upset by a couple of complications - one ends up being the appearance of an upper-class drug addict (Jacqueline McKenzie) in the gang's usual hang-out, while the other is the escalating gang war between the skinheads and a group of Vietnamese immigrants, which is kicked off when the skinheads assault an innocent couple at the beginning of the film. This provides enough of a premise to prop up a feature-length examination of skinhead sub-culture, which is captured in a very gritty verité style.
The film doesn't hesitate to showcase the skinheads as a largely pathetic group of individuals whose pride in their white heritage is the saddest and flimsiest possible basis for their identity; without it they're just another gang that engages in petty crime and lives in squalor. No matter what kind of fiercely charismatic gusto Crowe puts into his character's diatribes, it's never enough to make up for either his or the other characters' short-sighted foolishness (to the point where other characters will call them out on it). His uncompromising bigotry comes through in even the most trivial instances, such as him being the only one of the group to refuse eating pasta on the basis of it being Italian. Though Crowe brings considerable energy to his turn as the film's vicious protagonist, the other characters tend to be fairly one-note. The only other ones of any serious consequence are Crowe, McKenzie, and Crowe's main offsider (Daniel Pollock), whose nervous disposition makes for the ideal counterpoint to Crowe's cruel nature (and allows the film to build in a fairly standard love triangle between the trio). The film is perhaps a bit too episodic with the entire conflict against the Vietnamese resolving before too long and eventually forcing the remaining members into other misadventures as their numbers dwindle. The music varies between slices of neo-Nazi punk songs (which are naturally difficult to enjoy even after learning they were deliberately made up by non-Nazi bands) and groaning drones (less difficult to enjoy), to say nothing of the Kubrick-influenced use of classical music during one sequence.
Romper Stomper is still a pretty solid film that captures the essence of the skinheads' lifestyles without resorting to straight-up moralising about the wrongness of the characters' views. It manages to do this without setting up a lot of genuinely "good" characters in comparison; most of the Vietnamese characters have their own gang that's just waiting for the skinheads to make the first move, while the wealthy victim of the skinheads' home invasion happens to be an incestuous abuser of one of their number. There are even moments that hint towards less overt racism than the skinheads, such as the publican who sells his hotel to a group of Vietnamese entrepreneurs without even thinking to warn them that it's a regular hang-out for the skinheads and practically guarantees a conflict. The film wears its influences on its sleeve and manages to craft a sufficiently dark and gritty slice-of-life drama about the few fleeting highs and many lows of being a skinhead without feeling much need to ram a message home, which is appreciated but also makes the film feel somewhat directionless as a result.
Geoffrey Wright, 1992
A gang of Australian neo-Nazis get into a turf war with Vietnamese immigrants.
Romper Stomper is one of those films where the main draw comes from being immersed within a fringe sub-culture, even if it one as fundamentally unpleasant as that of neo-Nazi "skinheads". A young Russell Crowe stars as the leader of one such gang, ekeing out a meagre existence in the run-down Australian suburb of Footscray. When they're not busy harassing people of a different colour with their rampant xenophobia, they're too busy using unemployment checks to support their incredibly low-rent lifestyles that involve squatting, drinking, screwing, and whatever other cheap pleasures they can indulge. The balance gets upset by a couple of complications - one ends up being the appearance of an upper-class drug addict (Jacqueline McKenzie) in the gang's usual hang-out, while the other is the escalating gang war between the skinheads and a group of Vietnamese immigrants, which is kicked off when the skinheads assault an innocent couple at the beginning of the film. This provides enough of a premise to prop up a feature-length examination of skinhead sub-culture, which is captured in a very gritty verité style.
The film doesn't hesitate to showcase the skinheads as a largely pathetic group of individuals whose pride in their white heritage is the saddest and flimsiest possible basis for their identity; without it they're just another gang that engages in petty crime and lives in squalor. No matter what kind of fiercely charismatic gusto Crowe puts into his character's diatribes, it's never enough to make up for either his or the other characters' short-sighted foolishness (to the point where other characters will call them out on it). His uncompromising bigotry comes through in even the most trivial instances, such as him being the only one of the group to refuse eating pasta on the basis of it being Italian. Though Crowe brings considerable energy to his turn as the film's vicious protagonist, the other characters tend to be fairly one-note. The only other ones of any serious consequence are Crowe, McKenzie, and Crowe's main offsider (Daniel Pollock), whose nervous disposition makes for the ideal counterpoint to Crowe's cruel nature (and allows the film to build in a fairly standard love triangle between the trio). The film is perhaps a bit too episodic with the entire conflict against the Vietnamese resolving before too long and eventually forcing the remaining members into other misadventures as their numbers dwindle. The music varies between slices of neo-Nazi punk songs (which are naturally difficult to enjoy even after learning they were deliberately made up by non-Nazi bands) and groaning drones (less difficult to enjoy), to say nothing of the Kubrick-influenced use of classical music during one sequence.
Romper Stomper is still a pretty solid film that captures the essence of the skinheads' lifestyles without resorting to straight-up moralising about the wrongness of the characters' views. It manages to do this without setting up a lot of genuinely "good" characters in comparison; most of the Vietnamese characters have their own gang that's just waiting for the skinheads to make the first move, while the wealthy victim of the skinheads' home invasion happens to be an incestuous abuser of one of their number. There are even moments that hint towards less overt racism than the skinheads, such as the publican who sells his hotel to a group of Vietnamese entrepreneurs without even thinking to warn them that it's a regular hang-out for the skinheads and practically guarantees a conflict. The film wears its influences on its sleeve and manages to craft a sufficiently dark and gritty slice-of-life drama about the few fleeting highs and many lows of being a skinhead without feeling much need to ram a message home, which is appreciated but also makes the film feel somewhat directionless as a result.