Russell Crowe and Daniel Pollock are compelling, but Geoffrey Wright gives racist violence so much attention that his drama becomes numbing. We cannot recommend it on the strength of its performances alone.
We cannot recommend Romper Stomper, despite the force of its performances. Geoffrey Wright writes and directs a drama about neo-Nazi skinheads in Melbourne, with their attacks on Vietnamese immigrants providing the threat that drives it. His decision to stay close to the perpetrators could have made their hatred more intelligible without making it excusable. Instead, the repeated aggression takes up the space where that examination ought to happen, and the film becomes wearing long before it becomes illuminating.
Russell Crowe, as Hando, gives the film much of its hold on us. His performance makes Wright’s approach more troubling: good acting keeps us interested long after the screenplay has run short of things to say. Daniel Pollock, as Davey, also holds our attention through the surrounding aggression. Both performances deserve consideration, though the screenplay gives us too little reason to spend so much time in these people’s company.
Ron Hagen’s cinematography and Bill Murphy’s editing give the attacks the velocity of an action thriller. We were horrified by the violence against Vietnamese immigrants, and unsettled by how insistently the film made those attacks exciting to watch. The speed and visual force make it difficult to sit comfortably outside what is happening. That is an effective way of producing alarm, but the excitement needs more questioning than Wright’s screenplay gives it.
John Clifford White’s music adds to the pressure, which is effective in the moment and exhausting across the film. Steven Jones-Evans’s production design helps establish the gang’s surroundings, though Wright gives us little opportunity to consider Melbourne beyond its confrontations. We need more sense of the lives being disrupted, beyond their usefulness as targets. Without that attention, the setting too often becomes somewhere for the next bout of violence to happen.
It would be easy to demand a speech explaining that racism is wrong. The film does not need one, and its anti-racist purpose is clear enough. What Wright’s screenplay needs is more curiosity about how these people sustain their hatred, and more attention to what their victims stand to lose. Prolonged exposure to aggression cannot do all that work, especially when the staging keeps supplying the pleasures of a fight scene.
There is a legitimate place in thrillers for being trapped with people we would avoid outside a cinema. Wright understands how to make that proximity unpleasant, and the film’s rawness prevents the violence from becoming merely tidy entertainment. Yet it becomes monotonous when the same aggression keeps driving the drama without deepening it. At 94 minutes, this is hardly an overlong film by the clock, but its repeated confrontations leave us waiting for something more to emerge from them.
Those interested in Crowe and Pollock will find performances worth considering, and Wright plainly knows how to make violence register. Neither achievement makes the experience sufficiently rewarding. A drama that spends this much time with racist attackers needs to give us more than repeated proof that they are dangerous. Approach it for the acting only if sustained, numbing brutality is a price you are prepared to pay.
