Theme Park at its Darkest

‘It hasn’t aged well. Although, I must admit I haven’t seen it.’

• Blithe dismissal from woke idiot working in State Government.

When I snuck into the cinemas to see Romper Stomper at fifteen years of age, I was totally overwhelmed. The skins and their lives were exhilarating and terrifying: simultaneously attractive and repulsive. The film was over before I knew it, and I felt like I’d been dragged down many of those back alleys of Footscray by the hair.

Viewing it again thirty-five years later was a considerably different experience. I hadn’t seen either Taxi Driver or A Clockwork Orange when I was originally confronted by Geoffrey Wright’s tour de force, and having seen both those films since has given me far greater context to appreciate it.

A Clockwork Orange, made almost twenty years before, depicted similar characters. However, it was set in a fantastic future, which probably created a space for that kind of ultra-violence and delinquency to be countenanced by an audience in 1972.  

Romper Stomper depicts similar violence within a realistic context, or what was a realistic social context in the early nineties – back in the days when we still had Nazi skinheads. The film directly quotes A Clockwork Orange in some of its earliest frames, thereby positioning an astute audience for what they are about to witness.

Kubrick’s Little Alex and his Droogs are very easy to laugh at, given their language and behaviour, but Wright’s skinheads are more like hyenas than clowns. This is the Melbourne underclass, and they are the hapless prisoners of a relentless present-day.

Rewatching the film reminded me of something I was told at VCA, when I studied film and TV under the principal lecturer, Chris McGill: all great films have three things in common; a great director, a great actor and a great script. Without a doubt, Romper Stomper has all three.

Russell Crowe became one of the most famous actors in the world, and I maintain that his turn as Hando remains his best performance. While Travis Bickle has a kind of catatonic calm that explodes into violence, Hando is constantly simmering as his grip on control diminishes and the tiny nation he has built for himself is progressively eroded.

It’s astonishing for a first film, and Wright is both immensely capable as a writer and director. Aside from signalling context, he doesn’t do much to distract the audience from the strength of the performances in his role as director.

What the script is most remarkable for, in my opinion, is its economy. Everything you need to know about each of the characters and their circumstances is carefully seeded, and this becomes obvious on a second viewing.

The film was over before I knew it, and the shock of the climactic murders was surpassed by the presence of two Japanese tourists filming everything as it transpired. There are no neat and easy answers, and the experience remains both confronting and provocative until the very end.

This was what cinema was like when you were trusted to form your own opinions. Sergei Eisenstein wrote that, ‘The principal responsibility of the artist is to grip his audience,’ and regardless of your feelings about the film’s moral rectitude, Romper Stomper grips you like a Silverback gorilla.

**

The reason the film is said to have aged poorly is because it is the story of aggressive young white men, and such people deserve no cultural oxygen. The Karens have arrived; they know what’s best and you’re either going to shape up, or ship out! They have colonised the arts and government, mostly humanities and human services, and done a pretty effective job of choking the arts to death.

Romper Stomper was made in the age before the arts in Australia were transformed into a political lecture and became about as engaging as sitting in the waiting room at the dentist. The only difference is that most people need to go to the dentist, and hence why the arts in Australia is empty of everybody except middle-aged women.         

I think the preoccupation at the centre of the film – the way in which extreme politics and ideology attract people with personal problems they wish to express towards a ready-made enemy – are as relevant and vigorous as ever. The problem is that the waves of bureaucratic Karens simply aren’t charismatic. No one wants to sit and watch two hours of office-bound desk-jockeys bitch and dissemble. And the Australian Arts Industry continues to diminish.

This entry was posted on May 26, 2026 at 10:42 pm and is filed under Film, Pretensions toward cultural theory, Real Men with tags A Clockwork Orange, Australian Film Industry, Chris McGill, Footscray, Geoffrey Wright, Hando, Karens, Little Alex, Martin Scorsese, Nazi, Romper Stomper, Russell Crowe, Sergei Eisenstein, skinheads, Stanley Kubrick, Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle, VCA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.