Welcome to the Melbourne underworld. Following the death of his mother, seventeen year-old Joshua 'J' Cody (newcomer James Frecheville) moves in with his hitherto-estranged family, under the watchful eye of his doting grandmother, Janine 'Smurf' Cody (Jacki Weaver), and her three criminal sons - the Cody boys. Eldest son and armed robber, Andrew 'Pope' Cody (Ben Mendelsohn) is in hiding from a gang of renegade detectives. Middle brother Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) is a successful but volatile drug dealer, whilst the youngest Cody, Darren (Luke Ford), naïvely follows his elder brothers' lead. Just as 'Pope's' business partner and best friend, Barry Brown (Joel Edgerton), decides that he wants out of the game, recognising that their days of old-school banditry are all but over, tensions between the family and the police explode. 'J' finds himself at the centre of a cold-blooded revenge plot that turns his family upside down and which throws him directly into the path of senior homicide detective, Nathan Leckie (Guy Pearce). 'Animal Kingdom' is a powerful crime drama exploring the tense battle between a criminal family and the police, and the ordinary lives caught in the middle.