Romper Stomper

Featuring a young Russell Crowe in a knock out early performance, Romper Stomper is a gritty Australian urban thriller highlighting the danger of scapegoating and racial prejudice. With its skinhead protagonists and violent motif, the movie walks in the shadow of productions. Hando (Crowe), the psychotic leader of a gang of marauding neo-Nazi teenagers, begins a relationship with the epileptic Gabrielle, but though they at first make a good team the courtship soon turns abusive. Though Gabrielle has designs to take Hando away from his life of crime and destruction, his indoctrination into a racist world viewpoint seems all-consuming.  Hard-hitting and at times cruel, this sadistic drama bleeds with unpalatable truths and difficult to face up to notions of culture, identity and working-class disintegration. (88 Films)