Sydney, 2005, just after the Cronulla race riots. Jason (Damon Herriman) is recruiting foot soldiers in the Sutherland Shire of New South Wales for a resistance against against Middle Eastern retaliation for the riots. He enlists the help of Shit-Stick (Alexander England), a rental store employee who's been failing to teach Evan (Chris Bunton), his out-of-town cousin with Down syndrome, to drive, and Ditch (Justin Rozniak), a Ned Kelly obsessive whose head is covered in bandages from a new tattoo. Meanwhile, over in the suburb of Lakemba, Nick (Rahel Romahn) pulls Hassim (Lincoln Younes) away from his studies to join him on a road trip with devout Muslim Ibrahim (Michael Denkha) and loose-cannon rapper D-Mac (Fayssal Bazzi) to indeed wage retaliation.
This low-budget effort by writer-director Abe Forsythe, originally an Australian TV actor, is like Romper Stomper meets Two Hands; it has the former's focus on modern Australian race relations, with the latter's crime comedy tone. That's a very risky mix, but in impartially comparing and satirising both groups the result works thoroughly. Forsythe never takes sides, showing both gangs as increasingly bumbling and trigger-happy but never judging either one's motivations for waging war on each other, either.
Forsythe's direction and plotting are energetic and lucid and his dialogue completely authentic for both groups, and he coaxes natural turns from all his cast, Romahn and Younes being especially effective. Alongside its message about racism it also makes a blunt statement about ableism, too, with how Evan's crew basically use him as a puppet to keep them out of trouble. I was 17 when the Cronulla riots occurred and sent a ripple effect across Australia, and this movie gets its era, which unfortunately may as well still be here, down to a fever pitch. Just as Men at Work sang in their classic song of the same name, in Down Under, you better run, you better take cover.
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