Get ready to get dirty...
Sydney - 1969. Crime is cool, cops are crooked and 20 bucks buys you a whole night out. For Barry Ryan (Bryan Brown), life is sweet. He runs the girls, the clubs and the illegal casinos, and not even crooked detective Ray (Sam Neill) dares to stand in his way.
Barry's wife Sharon (Toni Collette) wears the pants, his mistress Margaret (Kestie Morassi) wears him out and his wide-eyed nephew Darcy (Sam Worthington) is learning just how cosy business can be.
When the Mafia dispatch Chicago hoods Tony (John Goodman) and Sal (Felix Williamson) to muscle in on his action, Barry's life takes a dramatic turn. His mistress starts making eyes at Darcy, his wife becomes suspicious and the Yanks won't take no for an answer - big mistake.
Barry decides to give the Yanks a lesson in outback hospitality.
Special Agent Matti
Done dirt cheap.
It's one of the greatest songs ever written and it applies perfectly. If ever anyone was up for doing dirty deeds, it's the Little Aussie Battlers™ in Dirty deeds. Those dumb Yanks [tautology - Director of Intelligence] wouldn't charge much, either.
It's like The hard word, if that film were set 35 years earlier, but without the butcher backwards slang. It has the hard-core crim, the cute one, the stupid one, the crooked cop, the bad crim, the working class crim's wife and the revenge. It also has the bonus of bashing the Yanks. Always worth a few extra points.
Everyone plays their roles in the way you'd expect: Bryan Brown has a hard-on for control, John Goodman is mild but menacing, Toni Collette is trashy but not without dignity, Felix Williamson is a wire stretched past breaking point. The best performance comes from Sam Worthington as the reluctant Vietnam vet in search of job security and the perfect pizza (the two go hand in had, naturally), not too unhappy to be working for Uncle Barry (Barry!) in the mean time. Darcy's culinary quest is the set-up for a great running gag, one which has monumental consequences for Australia (you can even book online! - see Domino's, Pizza Hut).
Meanwhile, the script gives you a good tour of Australia in the 60s: from racy Sydney night-clubs to sunburnt country pig wallows, from cold beer to grapefruit hedgehogs [Not too far from the boys from The dish - Director of Intelligence]. It's aggressive, funny and well twisted.
Dirty deeds (yes, you get to hear the song) is a well-made Aussie film with a laugh for anyone without a stick up their bum. Go hard!
MA 15+ (Medium level violence, medium level coarse language)
98 minutes (1:38 hours)
Film: 18 July 2002
DVD rental: 12 February 2003
VHS rental: 12 February 2003
VHS retail: 27 August 2003