20 December,2024 01:34 PM IST | Mumbai | Johnson Thomas
Boy Kills World
This is an action spectacle set in a dystopian fever dream reality. The narrative heralds a hyper-action movie about a media-addicted killer who wants to avenge his family's deaths. The titular Boy is a deaf-mute with a vibrant imagination.
When his family is murdered, the Boy escapes to the jungle and is trained by a mysterious shaman to repress his childish imagination and become an instrument of death.
The main character, known only as "Boy" though unable to speak has an internal voice which frequently offers up one-liners and sarcastic commentary, in the voice of H. Jon Benjamin. The movie transpires in a Dystopian Future (TM) where everything is controlled by the fascist dictator Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen) and the members of her family - sister Melanie (Michelle Dockery), brother Gideon (Brett Gelman), and Melanie's husband, Glen (Sharlto Copley).
The Van Der Koys maintain a tradition called "The Culling." Once per year, a dozen of Hilda's "enemies" are executed on national television. You guessed it right. The Boy's family was also a victim of the Culling. His life was saved by the mysterious Shaman (Yayan Ruhian), who teaches him to become a killing machine with one single goal: to avenge his family.
This movie may seem refreshingly different but it doesn't make much narrative sense. The stylistic, chaotic splurge of blood, gore, and action that characterizes Mortiz Mohr's feature debut, comes at you from hallucinatory origins. Its a comedy that fails to draw laughs, a hyper-actioner that spikes up the adrenaline intermittently and a dystopian saga that feels like it originated in a video game. The momentum flags and the final half-hour is devoted to finding narrative-based resolutions.
This is indeed a bizarre experience. Though Mohr keeps things moving at a frantic pace for most of the runtime, the film fails to grip you. It feels more like a regurgitation of âKill Bill' without the fancy storytelling craft to back it.
