Overview of Animal Kingdom film

I saw the film Animal Kingdom recently. It sounds like a nature documentary but NO it's the story of a criminal family, based in Melbourne, seen through the eyes of an adolescent boy who joins the family when his mother dies.

Jacki Weaver plays the boy's grandmother and matriarch of a family of criminal sons (played by Joel Edgerton, Ben Mendelsohn and others). She does an excellent job of portraying someone who seems all motherly and caring but is also manipulative and utterly ruthless when it suits her.

Guy Pearce plays a detective who tirelessly investigates the crimes and the family and tries to take the boy under his wing.

The film appears to be based on a family from 1980s Melbourne whom I was made aware of in the news, in documentaries and a series called Janus. This film, however, is set in the present.

Most Melbournians would recognise the "key" crime in the film; a payback killing of 2 policemen. In this fictional account, the crime has the effect of unraveling the criminal family.

I thought the film was compelling but, at the same time, quite bleak. It did not "glamourise" the criminal activities as the series Underbelly tends to do. Performances all round were very good but, I must say, I found the boy rather wooden.
Have a look at the "At the movies" review of it.