Boy Kills World movie review. An action smash on steroids that you will either love or hate – AVmania.cz

This is straight-up, off-the-charts entertainment that doesn’t take itself seriously. She’s just crazy so much that many may be wishing for her very soon.

The story takes us to the near post-apocalyptic future, specifically to a city where the Van Der Koy family, led by the ruthless Hilda (Famke Janssen), rules with an iron hand. It maintains people’s loyalty through absolute fear and the fact that every year it executes its most vocal opponents as part of the so-called round-up. In the past, among them was the family of the title boy, whose mother and beloved sister were killed by Hilda, and he himself was saved from death by a powerful warrior Shaman.

He decided to train the boy and use hard training, pain and hallucinogens to turn him into a killing machine that would one day get his revenge. And now he came closer. The grown-up protagonist, who is deaf-mute as a result of previous events and delivers inner monologues using a gruff male voice from a popular video game, sets out on a bloody journey in which he meets all the members of the ruling family and leaves behind a pile of corpses.

Yes, the story is absolutely silly and you’ve seen it hundreds of times in different variations, at least in action movies from the 80s and 90s. But nobody really cares about the plot here, because the main thing here is how crazy and brutal wilderness director Moritz Mohr created in his debut. And that he really did! Boy Kills World is a trampled and “speeded up” whip that does not let the viewer breathe even for a moment and supplies him non-stop with streams of ideas and attempts at originality. At the same time, the director wraps everything with a giant perspective, thanks to which the action scenes are complemented by ubiquitous humor and an almost self-parody touch.

A voice from a video game comments on everything ironically or confusedly, the main character often does not know how to behave due to being cut off from civilization, and the murderous chase takes place here via a twisted TV show, in which characters from cereal boxes act. This is just a taste of what the creators have prepared for us in their entertaining madness. And in addition, it is known that Mohr shot the entire film in the style of genre films from the eighties and nineties, and skillfully works here with elements of arcade games, on which the main character and obviously the director grew up.

The result is a totally unrestrained action mix, in which every gag or clever idea does not fall on fertile ground, but very soon another one follows, which will very easily bring a smile to your face. The footage is a seriously off-the-chain over-stylized ride that looks like it was filmed by someone with ADHD. In short, Mohr presents himself as a classic debutant who wants to show not only his talent, but also his boundless enthusiasm and drive to go headfirst into everything.

Which, on the one hand, results in a deadly pace and a kind of likeable creative guilelessness, on the other hand, it is also associated with a certain scatteredness and fragmentation of the material, as the director does not yet know how to jump gracefully enough between different styles and moods. And there is also the risk that the film will completely miss you with its humor, overstylization and a large portion of brutality. However, this is fine and justified in this case. Because when you go into something as full throttle as this novice director, you kind of have to count on the fact that you won’t quite meet a lot of viewers along the way. Especially with those whose blood type is not quite the action genre.

But if you can tune in to Mohr’s style quickly, you will be rewarded with a really big portion of fun that whizzes by from the beginning to almost the very end. Humorous scenes are sometimes unexpectedly funny, and the main asset is the logically excellently filmed action, which boasts very imaginative choreography and effective camera passes. It’s just a shame that even the shearer, who used his imaginary scissors more than necessary, often broke free from the chain, and because of this, the battles seem a little confusing in places. Even so, fans of the genre will enjoy the bloodshed here, thanks to Bill Skarsgård, who went all out in his transformation into an action fighter and left practically everything on the set. Even if he doesn’t say much logically, he can tighten the film more than satisfactorily with his gaze and muscles.

In the finale, unfortunately, the film slows down a bit and suddenly wants to play on a somewhat more serious note and especially on the emotions of the characters. But, unfortunately, it doesn’t work very well, when the course of the film so far has been carried out in a shot perspective and we logically did not get under the skin of the characters, who were either a killing machine or effectively balanced on the edge of caricature. That can hardly be caught up in the final quarter of an hour.

At the end, a direct comparison with the recent Monkey Man is offered. He chose a completely different action approach, looked perhaps too serious at certain moments and really played out a lot of motives during the footage. In this regard, Boy Kills World is a much more pure and straightforward action entertainment that, while it has its undoubted faults, manages to win the viewer over with honest enthusiasm, honest craft and love of the action genre. This movie just has that imaginary “heart” and it’s up to you whether you succumb to the barrage of crazy ideas and non-stop action, or you grind your teeth after a while. Both variants are possible thanks to an uncompromising creative approach.

Boy Kills World

The review was originally published on the Kinobox.cz website, its author is Milan Rozšafný.