When I first saw the Aussie crime comedy Gettin Square the one thing that stuck in my memory was David Wenham’s turn as the junkie lowlife Johnny Spiteri, especially the very funny courtroom scene where he manages to throw the solemn judicial proceedings into disarray by acting the goat. Or the weasel, to be more precise.
Having worked at Legal Aid as a criminal lawyer early in my career I recognised the type immediately: the deliberate obtuseness, the whiny ingratiating manner, the verbal slipperiness.
Johnny ‘Spit’ Spiteri was the creation of lawyer/crime writer Chris Nyst, who drew on his experience in the criminal courts of Queensland during the Bjelke-Petersen years for his stories of corrupt coppers, petty crims, drug-dealers, dodgy witnesses and wily streetsmart junkies like Johnny Spit.
It turns out I’m not the only one who loved this memorable character. Chris Nyst has written the screenplay for the new movie Spit, with Johnny as the central character. Director Jonathan Teplitsky is back for this sequel.
This time he’s been given a sentimental backstory involving childhood foster care, and a reason for showing up again all of a sudden, some 13 years later, although it’s actually 22 years since Gettin Square was released in 2003.
Johnny arrives back in Australia, with his trademark mullet, after years spent dealing dodgy Disney merch on the streets of London. He’s given up the junk; he’s ‘trackin straight’ now, he says, although not that straight: he manages to pilfer a new pair of thongs in the arrivals hall and is shuffling along in them, price tag still attached, when he gets busted by the border cops and taken into immigration detention. He gets away with the thongs but not the false passport.
Johnny’s not a bad bloke for a petty crim. He makes the most of his time in detention, wheeling and dealing in cigarettes in return for giving English lessons to his fellow detainees. There are plenty of good-natured laughs here, as he assigns Aussie-sounding names to his students that will sound better on their visa applications – Trevor (spelt ‘Treva’) instead of Jihad, Wozza instead of Wasim; and when these innocents ask for a more precise definition of the f-bomb, a word constantly on his lips, his well-meaning explanation of its various uses, conjugations and applications is a scream.
Eventually his true identity is discovered and he’s put in the slammer. Word gets out that he’s back, and things start to get complicated. All those years ago there was a big money heist, a murder and a stitch-up. Spit knows everything, which is why he did a runner in the first place.
Crooked cop Arne Deviers (David Field) and drug lord Chicka Martin (Gary Sweet) want him dead; federal cop Niall Toole (David Roberts) needs his help to nail these baddies, but Spit’s no squealer, even when he’s getting monstered by a big Maori bruiser in their pay.
He’s not defenceless. He’s made new friends in the detention centre, with local family and contacts. Then there turns out to be honour amongst the gang of thieves from the heist, some of whom have done well by putting their ill-gotten gains into a funeral parlour, which comes in handy later on.
Just as there’s a certain kind of plot the Brits do best, so this kind of larrikin crime comedy with a heart is the kind of thing I reckon we Aussies do best. Think Two Hands, or Robert Barrett’s Les Norton stories, which the ABC made into an excellent TV series a few years ago. Or Rake, also directed by Teplitsky. Stories full of colourful characters, larrikin attitude and the rich Aussie vernacular that’s disappearing from mainstream life but finds its last refuge in the underworld.
Gary Sweet and David Wenham lead the cast, but you’ll recognise many familiar faces. Some of them are back from Gettin Square, such as Marion Barrington (Helen Thompson) whose crime-lord hubby (Timothy Spall in the first movie) is now dead and she’s married to Crusher Knobes, played by Bob Franklin with a perfect cockney accent, which reminded me just how much Aussie slang owes to its working-class English origins.
It’s all deliciously plotted and vibrantly acted. Wenham even gets to reprise his courtroom schtick, right down to the whinge about who’s going to pay his bus fare.
The sub-plot about the long-lost sister and the newly-discovered nephew is heart-warming but not too mushy and hey, it does chime with what we know these days about childhood disadvantage leading to a life of crime, not to mention the redemptive power of family ties.
There’s a certain amount of fashionable piety expressed about Australia’s immigration policy, which sometimes goes over the top. For instance, I very much doubt that new arrivals are asked for their ‘Christian’ name these days. And they could have left out the moralising about jumping the queue. Otherwise, the mocking of bureaucratic officiousness is spot-on in a movie like this.
A propos of which, Hobart readers might like to try spotting Merridy Eastman (ex of Playschool) as one of the immigration officers. At least I think that’s who she plays. I didn’t know in advance that she was in it, which is a pity because there’s not enough info online yet about the full credits.
I loved this movie, and so did my companion and everyone else in the cinema.