Yahoo News Blue Murder at 25: why it's a pulse-pounding Australian crime classic
The writer-director David Michôd’s outstanding 2010 crime drama Animal Kingdom has been called “Scorsesean” more times than the average person washes their hands every day during this terribly dark and distressing period. But for me the most Scorsesean Australian production of them all isn’t a film but a two-part television miniseries that turns 25 this year.
It is, if you’ll pardon the hackneyed turn of phrase, once seen and never forgotten: the pulse-pounding Blue Murder, a masterpiece of the true-blue gangster genre.
Related: Travel Man: Richard Ayoade and friends are hilarious tour guides for a travel-less world
Michael Jenkins, who also directed the belated – and excellent – 2017 sequel Blue Murder: Killer Cop, evokes the vibe of a Scorsese crime film in several ways, firstly and most obviously in the depiction of organised crime. (Australian westerns are sometimes referred to as “meat pie westerns”. Should Aussie productions about organised crime have a similar name? Maybe ... Vegemite gangsters? Schooner and parmigiana mobsters?) But it’s also in the show’s gritty texture and street-side verisimilitude, and the way the escalating force of its drama hits you like a slap on the face.
There’s also extensive multi-person voiceover narration, a bold device used in the Scorsese classics Goodfellas and Casino. This counters the scuzzy settings and hotheaded characters with an almost literary intensity – if that word “literary” didn’t feel light years removed from the many fiends and lowlifes depicted. Jenkins establishes a cracking pace from the get-go, opening with the sound of a train rumbling down tracks accompanied by bursts of bluesy saxophone as the frame homes in on two nervous-looking men sitting in a car outside a bank.
“Something’s up mate, you made a blue!” yelps Neddy Smith (Tony Martin) to his companion, who assures him that the people they’re waiting for are coming. “So’s Christmas!” Neddy snaps back, setting in motion a production full of distinctively, inimitably Australian vernacular captured by the screenwriter, Ian David. The ’strayan turn of phrase is enunciated by an excellent albeit extremely blokey cast – including Richard Roxburgh, Steve Bastoni, Peter Phelps, Alex Dimitriades, Bill Hunter, Gary Sweet, John Hargreaves – and there’s even a brief cameo from the great Richard Carter.
Then Neddy’s voiceover begins: “This was a stupid thing for us to do. But I was young and Bobby Chapman swore it’d be an easy go.” The scene we’re watching is a botched robbery; this pair of two-bit crims fail to stop their targets and flee the scene, yelling and screaming. The next scene shows Neddy being nabbed by another key character, Roger “the Dodger” Rogerson (Roxburgh), who stuffs a pump-action shotgun in this face and exclaims, “Gotcha, Neddy!” By this point quite a lot has happened, and yet barely two and a half minutes of running time have elapsed – demonstrating breathtaking narrative efficiency.
The ensuing story, based on true events and set in Sydney during the 1970s and 80s, pivots between Neddy – who becomes a police informant – and Rogerson, a notoriously corrupt cop and convicted murderer now in jail serving a life sentence. How best to describe Neddy and the Dodger’s relationship: friends? Frenemies? Colleagues? Maybe the latter. The pair have many work meetings, after all, flagrantly hanging out in public places – dining at a Chinese restaurant, for instance, or necking beers at a pub.
The narrative pivots between them before adding a third key player – undercover cop Michael Drury (Bastoni) – who is introduced in a knuckle-gobbling drug deal sequence that leads straight into an exhilarating car chase, staged with a gritty raciness that reminded me of the bat-out-of-hell energy of the 1975 drug drama Pure Shit. Each of these key characters get a voiceover track sprinkled with the aforementioned very-fair-dinkum turns of phrase. At one point the Dodger notes that “real police work – the sort that puts hardened criminals behind bars – means forming relationships with people you wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire”.
Roxburgh delivers one of his all-time greatest performances, which was extended in Killer Cop, a sequel that tracked subsequent real-life chapters in this fascinatingly odious, double-dealing man’s life. Martin, emoting from underneath a thick film of sweat, is totally magnetic as Neddy, managing to combine terrible forcefulness with a sort of pathetic vulnerability.
It’s a shame we don’t see more of Martin on our screens today. Where is he? Why aren’t director’s knocking on his door? Bring him back, I say, and give the man a career renaissance. Failing that, you can bring him back to the screen yourself: by adding Blue Murder to your lists of things to check out during self-isolation. If you haven’t seen it, you should rectify the situation; if you have, it’s imminently rewatchable. Gotcha, Neddy!
