By Keri O’Shea
Warning – as this retrospective contains a detailed discussion of the film, it as such CONTAINS SPOILERS.
Well, last time I checked, this website was still called Brutal As Hell – and so, it is fitting that we should take a moment to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the UK release of a film which is definitively brutal as hell. Romper Stomper – from the very get-go – is not easy viewing. Its portrayal of skinhead violence is unflinching; as such, it seems to have garnered something of a laudatory reputation amongst right-wing skins themselves. Go and look up clips from the movie or songs from the soundtrack on Youtube, and you will almost invariably find comments which rejoice in the film’s racism or see Hando and his boys as people to emulate. It’s right what they say: you should never read the bottom half of the internet…
So, let’s get this out of the way first and foremost: anyone – anywhere in the world – who sees Romper Stomper as in any way, shape or form a pro-racism or pro-racist film is a fucking idiot. No exceptions.
Ignoring the sad irony that so many of the most vocal pro-Hitler fans on the internet who bark the loudest beneath the Romper Stomper vids in question seem to be based in Russia or Eastern European countries, and as such are people Hitler would have considered sub-human, let’s think about the film for a moment. The opening scenes of the film show the boys attacking and beating a group of Vietnamese children. Children. Even the worst coward or bully would (or should) surely have a hard time seeing this behaviour as bold or praiseworthy. It isn’t intended to be suggested conduct, and you can bet your bottom dollar that director Geoffrey Wright never ever had this in mind when he filmed it. Think further; the boys, as predicted by hangers-on Megan and Tracy, do indeed ‘all end up fucked’. They lose everything of the little they have. The only way out of the gang is enlightenment – or prison, or death. Makes you want to sign up on the spot, doesn’t it? One of the film’s many razor-sharp moments of irony comes when the gang flee a retaliatory gang of Vietnamese men as the superb soundtrack starts to assert that these ‘Fourth Reich fighting men [are} living in the sewers but they’re gonna go far’. Meanwhile, at this same moment, we see their number depleted, their squat decimated and them running like rats. Make no mistake, then – Romper Stomper in no way glamorises skinhead violence. You’d have to be selective to the point of idiocy to really think so.
However, one of the film’s towering strengths is that, although it doesn’t shy away from getting up close with the philosophy and mindset of these young men and women – with a particularly potent scene as Russell Crowe’s Hando reads from Mein Kampf – the film doesn’t simply depict them as ogres. Nor does it simply whirl through an array of violent set pieces with no point. The really unsettling, and gripping thing about Romper Stomper is that it shows us real people. Sure, some of the more minor figures in the gang – Sonny Jim, Chuckles – don’t have the most vibrant inner lives, but they’re believable nonetheless. See, at the heart of this story we have a group of displaced human beings, broke, isolated and lacking any of the usual safety nets like work or family. They live hand to mouth, moving from one shitty squat to another, and they resent it. Without excusing the gang’s obsession with fighting economic migration into Footscray, Melbourne, we’re shown why it might be that they’re lashing out, and how these people have all washed up together, evidently seeking a sense of belonging from one another. You can hate what they espouse, of course you should, but by the end of the film I always find it impossible to hate the gang members – something which is a huge compliment to the writing, acting and direction. I don’t hate Hando either, despite his escalating, menacing behaviour. Considering the research and work which Crowe (who apparently still gets the odd acting job) and his fellow gang members did to prepare themselves for as realistic a gang vibe as possible, perhaps the pathos isn’t a surprise. But does that make me feel a little uncomfortable in places? Yes, because good filmmaking always has that potential.
So – we’re given our basic set-up early on. A group of young men and a couple of molls have congregated around the charismatic Hando, and he in turn is part of a loosely-organised network of Neo-Nazi footsoldiers, dedicated primarily to scaring off the Vietnamese who are, they feel, crowding out the white areas of the city. Life already seems pretty precarious, and then the arrival of the deeply damaged, but warm-hearted Gabrielle (Jacqueline McKenzie, incredibly starring in her first film role here) starts off a spiral of events. Herself seeking love and stability, she throws herself into the centre of the gang, becoming smitten with the brutal but charming gang leader. However, he is unwilling or incapable of forming a relationship with her; the only real flashes of warmth and humanity we see from Hando are in relation to his boys, and second-in-command Davey (Daniel Pollock) in particular. Where Hando has no real interest in Gabe, Davey sees the hope of love with her, which fundamentally undermines the gang at a moment when their fortunes are balanced on a knife-edge as ‘their place’, their local pub gets bought out by a Vietnamese businessman and his sons. The resultant events play out as a modern working-class tragedy, as Gabe, Hando and Davey each try to find in one another the something which is lacking from their respective lives. The opportunity to exchange one sense of belonging for another, in effect, irrevocably undermines the existence of the gang. The centre cannot hold.
The story, as it plays out, is told with equal measures of veritas, pathos, irony – and yes, even humour. Hear me out.
As aggressive as these guys can get, as horrific as the situations are as they unfold, you cannot tell me that Romper Stomper doesn’t have its moments of deft black comedy. In fact, I’d argue that those moments, as brief as they are, are fundamentally important to the plot. They are essential in humanising the characters, making them seem more than their appearances first suggest, and in giving the characters something everyday and mundane to react to as humour takes them out of their stock characterisation for a while. Regard Sonny’s dismissal of going fruit-picking with the girls instead of waging war against the ‘Gooks’ who just gave his gang a kicking, with his pointed retort, ‘I hate the fucking country’. Or the tragicomic figure of Flea, a new recruit to the gang who looks ‘like a fucking hippy with hair that long’ – a guy who only joined up because, in his own words, he needed a job. There are even some moments of daft physical humour too which are, whisper it, quite endearing. When Gabe accidentally and then not-quite-accidentally soaks Davey as they wash dishes together, it comes across as natural and charming enough to work. Of course, all of these moments are short-lived. Humour is there, it’s important, but it’s always book-ended with something nastier or sadder. Light relief in Romper Stomper is momentary, and then we’re back into the tension – that change-around is something else which feeds into that seam of irony running all the way through the film, starting with the cold irony of immigrants telling immigrants that Australia is ‘not their country’ in the opening reels and ending with events leading up to the staggering finale, which layers ironies so effectively that I am always emotionally involved in the ending of this film.
If Romper Stomper contains strong currents of both love and hate, then, both of these emotional states are linked together by the desire for vengeance, which grows stronger and shifts around, first finding one target and then another. The gang’s need to destroy the Vietnamese who lately did so much harm to them aids and abets the abused Gabe in a plot to implicate her father Martin; his desire to avenge himself on the boys who have dared to take his daughter away escalates the tension in the gang, and when they then reject Gabe, she makes the fatal decision to avenge herself on them. Davey is spared, because he finally moves on – he goes home, back to a family he is apparently unique in having had all along – and then finds love. But, when you open a floodgate, you don’t get to control what happens. The plot descends into nightmare as the collision course between Gabe, Davey and Hando reaches its inevitable point, but finally there’s resolution. At last, the anger is dissipated. As Davey looks up at those watching him and Gabe, there is no animosity left. He has come full circle.
That touching last scene, tragically, is also the last filmed scene ever to feature Daniel ‘Davey’ Pollock, the young man whom director Wright calls ‘instinctively brilliant’ in his performance here. Pollock never got the chance to reflect on his work in Romper Stomper; he committed suicide prior to the film’s release. Whilst his best-known character was able to escape his own demons in the end, sadly, Pollock himself could not, and his death at the age of twenty-two deprived Australian cinema of one of its most promising talents. It’s hard not to think of that loss when watching this movie, but nonetheless to feel grateful for such a brilliant characterisation, particularly how the interplay works with the two other lead actors.
His fine work alongside Crowe and the rest of the cast made for a gang movie where we’re really taken into the heart of a gang: whatever we think, we know the characters we sit alongside. It is in this that I personally feel that Romper Stomper surpasses the decent, but perhaps less carefully-crafted later movies of similar subject matter, such as Made in England, which to me just has less ambiguity, lower believability, less multi-layering. That we are encouraged to relate to the deeply flawed individuals in Romper Stomper without ever sentimentalising is disconcerting, but it’s memorable and it’s powerful. And, as long as we admire cinema which is brutal as hell, we must learn to accept the journey on which it takes us, wherever it takes us.
Perhaps ultimately, whatever violence we are confronted with here, however ugly the principles which drive it, it’s coming from a root source which is all too familiar. Maybe the most unpalatable truism in this film is that it reminds us of the drive towards wanting to belong – something which we all have within us – and how it can be one of the most destructive human instincts there is. Happy twentieth then, Romper Stomper. You’ve taught your lessons well.