Review of The Act of Killing (2012) by Anoop K — 03 Mar 2014

This is probably going to be the hardest movie for me to accurately explain why I did not like it. There are not many negative reviews you will find for the Academy Award nominated documentary, The Act of Killing, which is why it has been so hard for me to compare my thoughts on it with reviews similar to mine, because there are none.

The Act of Killing is a documentary about Indonesian war criminals who were involved in mass murder and genocide in the 1960s. The film follows them as the director has them reenact the tortures and murders that they had committed in the past. The basic idea of that concept has the potential to not only be interesting, but also emotionally challenging for these criminals to come to terms with what they had done and reflect on the atrocities they were forced to commit. The main problem that I had with this documentary is that the warlords never fully grasp the weight of the actions they committed and they just take it all in stride. They show almost no remorse for anything that they have done and they treat themselves like movie stars. There are several scenes where they compare their killings to those of action stars like Al Pacino, John Wayne, etc. It's not until the very ending of the movie where one of the warlords finally grasps the severity of his actions, but any potential emotion and depth that this scene could have had is completely ruined because this guy has the most laughably horrific cry in the world. I was half expecting to hear him say, ''I know somewhere deep down in my heart, I still love you!" It also doesn't help that as soon as this revelation happens, the movie ends right then and there with no time to actually explore the one notion of this movie that could have been somewhat fascinating.

I don't blame the director at all for being unable to humanize these people. There are many moments where he even asks them how they're able to live what what they've done and if they feel sorry at all, even after filming the reenactment scenes; but nine times out of ten, they answer just simply by saying, "Well, that was what we were told to do", "I don't really think about it anymore", or something in the same vein as that. For the first act or so of the movie, it could be accepted that this is how they would think and feel, but as the movie progresses, there really needed to be more scenes dedicated to the personal reflections and less on them celebrating themselves for us to actually sympathize with them.

That's another thing. This movie actually expects us to sympathize with and feel for real-life genocidal war criminals who have nonchalantly carried out countless tortures and murders throughout the course of their lives and they feel nothing over it. I'm sorry, that's where I draw the line.

Even disregarding those aspects, I still would not have liked this movie any more than I currently do, because worst of all, this movie is boring as sin on top of all that. This is a subject matter that could have gotten its point across and could have been more interesting as a short subject documentary, but it starts to wear thin over the course of a two hour run time.

Maybe in a few months or so, I'll rewatch The Act of Killing and see what everyone else in the world sees in this film, but as of right now, I was bored, angered, and somewhat offended by The Act of Killing and I'm glad that it didn't win Best Documentary over 20 Feet From Stardom.