AFTER using archive footage to set the scene for his film about the night after the Cronulla riots in December 2003, writer/director Abe Forsythe gets down to business with a fictional aftermath.

Two carloads of young men start a one-night war in Sydney’s south-east, Aussies versus Lebs. The home side is defending its perceived exclusive right to the local beaches and women. The visiting side is claiming equal rights that the locals refuse to grant. At half time, the Aussie team visits a take-away to refuel with middle-eastern food.

“Down Under” is billed as a comedy. It’s hard to find much to laugh at when baseball bats are being swung, characters carry guns and knives, racist taunts fill the air and cars are used as weapons. And all this with nary a policeman in sight until next morning as the sun rises over a stretch of coast strewn with young men’s bodies. And neither side the victor.

The acting’s impressive. The staging of a fast-moving narrative lit mainly by street lamps and car headlights is purposefully discomforting. The language is the argot of unintelligent, uneducated young men convinced that they’re chosen to rid the area of foreign-born intruders. Sounds familiar? Uncomfortably so. Not like today’s silent, secretive menace of radicalised young folk but noisy rantings of young men and, in the background, older men pumping up prejudice.

The film’s humour is cynical, mordant, often bitter, pathetic. I left the cinema not having found a convincing reason for making it.

At Dendy