Joshua ‘J’ Cody, 17, is staring vacantly at a TV game show while his mum snoozes on the couch next to him. Except that she’s not snoozing; she has overdosed, fatally, on heroin. So he calls his estranged grandma, Janine ‘Smurf’ Cody, who tells him to pack his bags, and gently, reassuringly invites him into the lions’ den.

Janine lives with her three sons, J’s uncles. The Cody boys are notorious armed robbers, under constant police surveillance. When one of their gang is killed by police, vengeance is swift and brutal, and J finds himself an accessory to murder. Enter Detective Leckie, who hopes to convince J to testify against the family. There’s a difference between being strong, he explains to J, and the illusion of strength from being under the protection of the seemingly strong. What’s a boy got to do to survive?

Drawn from the recent history of Melbourne’s gangland, every scene is surprising, building to an epic climax hinged on revelations about character. Newcomer James Frecheville is excellent as J, moving from inarticulate teen observer to trapped participant. Even better is Jacki Weaver as Smurf, the mother hen to this family of rotten eggs. Doting, chirpy and kissy-kissy, she smiles like a pixie but her eyes are as cold as a shark’s. Nick Dent