THE LINE BETWEEN
GANGSTERS AND POLICE BECAME SO
BLURRED THAT IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO
KNOW WHO YOU COULD TRUST
A FILM THAT TAKES YOU
THROUGH THE DECADES, THE UNSOLVED
MURDERS, STRANGE DISAPPEARANCES,
BENT COPPERS AND HARD BASTARDS
The view that most people have of Australia is the sunny beaches, love of beers, the great expanses, the hot climate and its world - famous landmarks...and yet behind this is a long running culture of gangs and bent coppers. All of this centres around the drugs trade that became so lucrative that the coppers began doing more than taking a cut. If the 1970`s were bad then 1980`s took it to another level entirely...when usage of smack grew it made people in the trade of trafficking and selling it get more and more greedy, more aggressive and more ruthless.
In Melbourne, the life of a gangster resembled Miami vice rather than any Aussie TV cop show you`ve ever seen. Not only were the gangsters taking out each other, but coppers were also putting OTHER coppers in the firing line. Unsurprisingly not many people who were the major players have lived to tell the tale.
There had been a code of sorts up until then, business wasn`t done in the public eye, you kept a low profile, you never involved women or children and avoided bringing heat to your operation by trying to take out the police...by the mid 80`s that had all gone. The new generation were not bound by those rules. When a cop killed a a small time dealer in dodgy circumstances where he was lured to a meeting by another criminal in 1981, his girlfriend - a rather glamourous looking prostitute took to the TV, detailing the close relationship between drug traffickers and coppers - gaining a job writing articles for magazines, and having a 60 minutes episode dedicated to her - it exposed to the Australian public for the first time just what was going on.
She was murdered. No one was ever convicted of her murder. That happened a lot, as you will see.
That (senior) cop (who also took out a contract on another who was getting too close to his criminal friends) went to jail on two separate occasions later on. Not for killing anyone though....
In fact, some of the few gangsters who have survived the time have teamed up with him, and now do pub tours where they reminisce on the "bad old days"
This film takes a sober look at the time, without resorting to glorifying - which in a lot of made - for -TV documentaries around this subject have a habit of doing. Features Mark "Chopper" Reid with his inside knowledge of who was doing what to whom, plus other major characters on both side of the blue line.
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