Format: DVD from personal collection on big ol’ television.
If one assumes that all of the World War II films about the Holocaust are, on a deeper level, about race, then race relations are the most frequently filmed topic on The List. Naturally, when it comes to film, mixing it up with various races isn’t apple pie and ice cream. With a film like Romper Stomper, race is front and center, and what happens is pretty damned ugly.
I’m going to guess that most of the readers here are more familiar with a couple of other films, one older and one newer than Romper Stomper, but it’s the best comparison I can think of. A great deal of this film comes across like A Clockwork Orange had a lovechild with American History X. We have the sort of random gang violence of Kubrick’s film, the thoughtless crime and rampant destruction for no purpose other than to destroy something. All of this is motivated by race, though, since the bulk of our characters are Australian white supremacists. What this means for those of us watching is that there’s plenty of Nazi regalia and lots of swastika tattoos. The violence tends to be perpetrated against the Vietnamese—a bit of a change from what Americans might be used to—but it ultimately results in the same thing.
