Romper Stomper (1992)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Written by Geoffrey Wright
Directed by Geoffrey Wright
Starring Russell Crowe, Daniel Pollock, and Jacqueline McKenzie

Features:

• Director’s commentary
  
• Skinhead documentary
  
• Making-of interview with Wright
  
• Interviews with Crowe and Wright
  
• Still galleries
  
• Cast filmographies/biographies
  
• Film restoration comparison
  

Rating: Unrated, suitable for audiences 18+

Anamorphic: Yes

My advice: Own it.

Before he was Maximus or John Nash, Russell Crowe cut his acting teeth in a string of independent films. Romper Stomper sees Crowe as Hando, a tattooed, violent, unstable leader of a gang of skinheads in the blue collar slums of Australia. The targets of his racial hatred are the immigrants from southeast Asia that are moving into “his” neighborhood and buying up local hangouts with money earned from jobs they “stole” from Hando’s gang of worthless layabout criminals.

Hando shacks up with Gabrielle, a rich girl slumming it to piss off Daddy, but it’s his best friend Davey that falls in love with her. This sets the stage for a dangerous love triangle in the hard-knock world of barely contained violence that the three inhabit. Complicating matters is a feud with a group of local Vietnamese immigrants that turns remarkably bloody when Hando’s gang bites off more than it can chew while protecting their favorite hangout.

When things turn sour in their fight with the Vietnamese, Hando and company retreat to a new hiding spot, and plan a home invasion of Gabe’s father, finalizing her revenge on him for his emotional and sexual abuse of her. Once again, things don’t quite go as planned, and the trio make for parts unknown in a desperate bid by Hando to regain his best friend from the thrall of this woman who threatens to tear his world of bigotry, brotherhood, and violence apart.

When this film originally appeared, writer/director Wright took a great deal of flack in the media for using skinheads as the central characters of the film, without doing much directorial questioning of their ideology and practices. Some even went so far as to accuse Wright of glorifying the skinhead lifestyle. To be blunt, I can’t imagine how few brain cells one would have to have in order to view this movie as a glorification of their lifestyle, when the vast bulk of them end up dead or in prison before the credits roll. Wright’s portrayal is realistic, gripping, and allows viewers to draw their own conclusions about the hateful world of the skinheads, instead of bludgeoning the audience over the head with a lot of out-of-place moralizing.

Crowe’s performance is stellar, and chilling. The barely contained violence bubbling just under Hando’s surface is conveyed very well, but to Crowe’s credit, he also brings across Hando’s genuine affection for the members of his gang (particularly Davey and the young Bubs). The other members of the cast are equally good, with the late Daniel Pollock turning in a performance so good that it hurts me to think he will give no more, having taken his own life after a battle with heroin addiction a mere year after the film was completed.

Stops were pulled out for the DVD release, with a full digital remaster of the original prints and a Dolby 5.1 audio track. Interviews with writer/director Wright and Crowe from the film’s original run, as well as a documentary about skinheads pieced together from Wright’s notes made during his six-month stint among the skinheads, round out the supplemental material. Wright’s commentary track is excellent, sharing his insights gained during his time living with skinheads, technical details about the challenges of shooting the budget on a tight schedule and tighter budget, and personal reminiscence about working with this talented group of actors.

If you can stomach the random violence and blatant racial hatred of the main characters, this movie belongs on your shelf. If you’re a bit more sensitive about such things, you still should give it a rental – but it would be understandable if a second viewing didn’t appeal to you. Romper Stomper is a well-crafted, well-acted, challenging film that needs a wider audience to give it a look now that it’s available on DVD.