I decided to continue my current film series, my tour d' Crowe, with "Romper Stomper." For anyone lacking a frame of reference for this movie, think "American History X" filmed in Australia with all the amps on eleven after thirty straight consecutive viewings of "Clockwork Orange."

In English: skinheads and violence. If you're still curious, check it out here.

This was Russell Crowe's breakout role, apparently, so I wish I could give the movie an awed, glowing review. It ain't gonna happen. First of all, my head hurts from ninety minutes of unintelligible dialogue. I know the movie was filmed in English, but I understood maybe one word out of five. When Australians speak at a normal speed (say, to other Aussies rather than to Americans), they are essentially incomprehensible. It was like watching something in Norwegian.

The plot was simple enough, sort of. Angry skinheads roam neighborhood beating up Asians. Pretty girl joins gang, bangs leader for a while, messes with right-hand man, turns out to be psycho chick. Aimless violence turns into bizarre love triangle. The dialogue wasn't entirely necessary.

In fact, nothing in "Romper Stomper" was particularly necessary, although those of us (ahem) who get our twisted kicks out of watching dangerous people be frightening wouldn't call it a waste of time. Russell Crowe is a scary guy when he's mad, and from the safety and comfort of my living room, I thought that was terrific. He can move extremely fast, and the image of him running down the beach after Jacqueline McKenzie is the stuff of nightmares.

As a side note, the director has claimed that Crowe was actually choking McKenzie during a fight scene. "It's very hard to get him to hold back." No comment.

But aside from watching Crowe be scary, there's not much of a point to the film. "American History X" gave us full characters, people we could understand, reasons for the hate and violence. "Romper Stomper" gives us nothing. Crowe's gang could have sprung full-grown from the head of Zeus for all we know of their families. I never reached a point where I gave a damn about any of the characters, even McKenzie. Aren't we at least supposed to like the girl?

Next up: "Virtuosity," which I understand isn't very good but does fit the criterion of starring Russell Crowe.