High summit of cinema?

More than a decade after the controversial film’s release, Bob Ellis considers whether Geoffrey Wright’s Romper Stomper, starring Russell Crowe, has stood the test of time.

It was nine years before Tampa, four years before Hanson, but there it was, ugly, prophetic, violent, Romper Stomper. ‘This is not your country’. A frankly Hitlerist gang of tattooed thugs going after Asians with baseball bats, bricks and knives in Footscray alleys, defending Australia’s racial and cultural purity. ‘Won’t let what happened to the Abos happen to us,’ says Hando, the headshaven pack leader, urging his eager swarm of war-painted dysfunctionals on, despising pasta as ‘wog food’ and smashing up Japanese cars, pushing back the yellow hordes with Howardite gravitas, we will decide who comes here, and tribal pride. He may lose this war against the unceasing invader, but he will give it his best shot. Russell Crowe in the role has the moral force of Brando, with the crisp, succinct charisma common to all great warrior-leaders.

Undertones of the classics

Homer comes to mind, and Clockwork Orange and Mad Max and Pure Shit and even Downfall, for anyone watching this epic unravelling of a big dream. As Bogart and Cagney and Jimmy Blacksmith showed, we always identify with the character who’s front and centre whatever his beliefs or his genocidal deeds. So good is Crowe and his co-stars – and the urban warfare choreography of the auteur, Geoffrey Wright – the story by its end seems almost Arthurian.