Idiot Box

1997
6.4| 1h25m| en
Details

Mick and Kev – bored, unemployed and aimless in the western suburbs of Sydney – decide to rob a bank, more or less for the fun of it.

Director

Producted By

Australian Film Finance Corporation

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Reviews

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.
Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.
Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
bombersflyup Idiot Box is uninteresting and unfunny.Realistic unlikable people doing unrealistic things. The ending makes all the build up for nothing, as Kev should've just shot the other bank robbers and started a hostage negotiation as he wanted to go out with a bang anyway. What a dud.
Woodyanders A rip-snortingly good seriocomic Australian crime caper romp about Kev and Mick, who are a couple of slothful, shiftless, luckless, jobless, penniless, hopelessly dumb and perpetually beer-blasted couch potato twentysomething slacker meatheads who are constantly hard up for booze money. The dim-witted duo decide to reverse their misfortune by robbing a bank. Naturally, things don't go as planned, with a rival gang of clown-masked stick-up boys who've been holding up banks all over the city gumming up the works. This delightfully offbeat feature scores a 100% smack dab on the money bull's eye thanks to its engagingly off-kilter sense of raucously wiggy humor, keenly observant feel for and genuine sympathy towards miserably impoverished, just barely scraping by bottom-of-the-socioeconomic-ladder lower-class people, uniformly bang-up acting, fluid photography, and commendably unpredictable loosey-goosey narrative structure. Writer/director David Caesar tells the whole manic story with dynamic, barn-storming panache and punchy, pacy, rat-a-tat-tat bravura style to burn, adroitly pulling off a difficult balancing act of laugh-out-loud uproarious comedy and quietly affecting low-key drama (a subplot concerning the leader of the rival gang needing the stolen loot to support his junkie wife's drug habit proves to be especially poignant). The robbery itself is a marvelously tense and thrilling tour-de-force set piece. Best of all, Ben Mendelsohn as the hostile, dangerously temperamental Kev and Jeremy Simms as Kev's more laid-back, long-suffering bud Mick display a wonderfully edgy and oftentimes downright electric chemistry. While the main characters are unarguable losers, the film overall is a total winner.
cynharm A grim, gritty and uncompromising look at slacker life in the western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. A similar mind set to FIGHT CLUB, THE GRADUATE, SUBURBIA and even A CLOCKWORK ORANGE - young men with no future, with nothing to do but spew hate at the establishment around them. An underrated, under appreciated and highly engrossing film. Watch this film and you'll feel like swigging a case of VB and smashing the empties against a brick wall.
TheVid Both the style and content of this film (as previous reviewers have stated) are far from fresh, but I can't be too unkind to a film that at least doesn't pander to the PG-13 crowd with the usual doses of sitcom sensitivity and redemptive moralism. The performances are all well delivered, the look of the film is grimly realistic, and the only obligatory, sensationalistic aspect of the piece is the annoyingly typical song-track music (that gleefully exploits and sells the usual mishmash that adds up to a pop-muzak CD). There's some good dialogue here and some fine widescreen photography for those film enthusiasts who are interested in checking out the DVD release of this decent Aussie indie.