Review of Bullet Ballet (1998) by Wut S — 29 Aug 2007

Bullet Ballet is a dark psychological thriller exhibiting humanism through the twisted lives of escapists who dwell in a grim, industrialized urban cluster. There are plenty of gun firing, limbs breaking, but the actual blood spilling and deaths are not always visible--the fatal instants are absent due to film techniques such as cutaways.

Watching Bullet Ballet is like a sensory overload. The amount of information induced by fast cutting and non-linear narratives help enhancing the film's diabolical atmosphere.

The goals to murder and commit suicide, if realized, would prove the mental strength necessary to live or successfully escape Bullet Ballet's world. Human emotions and fears cause the characters to fall short on their twisted ambitions. The film, then, revolves around (moral) displacement. In an ethical community, the inability to breach inviolability attests to goodness, rendering the attempts of the wrong as forgivable. However, in a pandemonium where power and competence prevail, ethics are nothing but weaknesses. In real life, failed moral crimes could attain a respectable redemption, but in Bullet Ballet, they denote eternal suffering. Paradoxically, the film's obstinately dismal semblance incites our gratitudes towards the whole world.