Child’s Play
First-timer Moritz Mohr is trying really, really, really hard to make an impression.
Boy Kills World
Director: Moritz Mohr • Writers: Tyler Burton Smith, Arend Remmers
Starring: Bill Skarsgård, H Jon Benjamin, Yayan Ruhian, Jessica Rothe, Michelle Dockery, Brett Gelman, Andrew Koji
Germany / South Africa / USA • 1hr 51mins
Opens Hong Kong May 30 • III
Grade: C+
In a not-too-distant – or perhaps very distant, it’s never made clear – dystopian future defined by its product placement and Running Man-style television, a man simply identified as Boy (a totally jacked Bill Skarsgård, It, John Wick: Chapter 4) lives in the wild jungle outside the city. Some city. It was once glorious, before it succumbed to violence and rot. But then the Van Der Koys, specifically the despotic Hilda (OG Phoenix Famke Janssen), cleaned up the town, made capitalism thrive again, and now she maintains control through the annual The Culling. In that ceremony, 12 random citizens – in the early days they were Hilda’s enemies – are selected to die publicly (don’t ask) and ensure the peace. If that sounds like The Hunger Games well, that’s because it smacks of The Hunger Games. Anyway, the deaf-mute Boy wants revenge against Hilda and her corrupt ruling family, among them Hilda’s sister Melanie (Michelle Dockery, The Gentlemen), her brother Gideon (Brett Gelman, Stranger Things) and brother-in-law Glen (Sharlto Copley). He trains in the jungle with The Shaman (The Raid’s Yayan Ruhian) who saved his life as a youngster (don’t ask), until the day comes to venture into the city to exact his vengeance, and to learn a grim truth about himself.
There’s a lot of this
First time director Moritz Mohr’s Boy Kills World is what I like to call onslaught filmmaking: a relentless and exhausting series of set pieces pivoting on a one-man-wrecking-crew – a man supremely skilled in the art of fucking your shit up – out for some degree of revenge. Except in Mohr’s film, the onslaught is designed to make us marvel at the action choreography and forget that we neither know nor care about Boy. In its manic drive to create a hilariously violent cult classic along the lines of irreverent and gleefully ridiculous B charmers like Crank, Shoot ’Em Up, Copshop and this year’s The Beekeeper (that’s two for Jason Statham), Mohr has let the video game and/or comic book aesthetic trump story, on top of which he and writers Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers have forgotten a few crucial elements. Aside from a lead we can root for, they’ve forgotten that cult classics are 1) not decided by the filmmakers, but by audiences and 2) the filmmakers making cult classics weren’t being intentionally clever. Their sincerity carried the day.
Mohr, for all his studied polish, is being far too clever for his own good. Which is not to say Boy Kills World is devoid of its own charms altogether. At the top of the list is the great H Jon Benjamin (Archer, Bob’s Burgers) as Boy’s inner voice, giving a running colour commentary on what Boy is thinking, feeling, and planning. There are moments when the voice-over is distracting but Benjamin also has the film’s best line readings. Andre Koji (Snake Eyes) and Isaiah Mustafa (Old Spice Guy, and nope that never gets old) as resistance fighters Basho and Benny are high points, an unhinged and enthusiastic rebel who’s positive you can fight city hall, and a guy so heavily bearded Boy can’t read his lips. And among the beat-downs, a cheese grater makes its triumphant return as a weapon (last seen in Evil Dead Rise) and it. Is. Gnarly.
But it’s a lot of sound and fury signifying very little, and ultimately Boy Kills World relies too heavily on so-called shock and awe: “Oh, damn!” moments of creative brutality in lieu of a story or characters you enjoy watching. Stupid as Crank may be, Statham’s Chev Chelios is effortlessly likeable in his dickishness. Despite Skarsgård’s 100% committed performance (kudos to his very strong deadpan), and despite all of cinematographer Peter Matjasko’s meticulously kinetic camera work and frantically edited (by Lucian Barnard) fights, the thin story lets everyone down. Just because it’s another one-man-wrecking-crew-seeking-justice movie doesn’t mean it can’t be freshened up and still play by the rules (Exhibit A: John Wick). If you can’t guess who the Van Der Koys’ muscle June 27 (Jessica Rothe, Happy Death Day) is, you haven’t been paying enough attention to your onslaught films. — DEK